Post-Failure Recovery Strategies for Metrorail Transit Networks With Washington D.C. As a Case Study

Abstract

Metro-Rail transit systems are large-scale networks in numerous modern urban areas that play prominent direct and supportive roles in providing efficient mobility for sustaining communities and local economies. Any event leading to failure of a metro-rail network could have serious societal consequences, such as dramatic effect on the safety and wellbeing of commuters in addition to direct and indirect costs from its diminished performance that lead to resilience loss. Potential performance losses might exhibit complexity and pose a challenge for measurement and prediction. Hence, measuring the resilience of such a network enables its efficient enhancement in a cost-effective manner. Enhancing resilience highly depends on identifying recovery strategies with special attention not only to restoring connectedness but also on reducing associated failure and recovery costs. An effective recovery strategy must demonstrate rapid optimal restoration of a disrupted system while minimizing the cost of the disruption. The objective of this paper is to identify effective recovery strategies to reduce the performance loss and to minimize the total cost of a network during and after a disruptive event, using Washington D.C. Metro with its 91 stations and 140 links as a case study. Method of measuring performance loss in this paper, illustrates that the best recovery sequence typically reflects the order of components ranked based on their degree of vulnerability in the network. Also, the proposed cost model provides a basis to decision makers to identify an optimal recovery strategy according to both paramount recovery sequence and minimum cost consideration.