A Quantitative Model to Define the Priority of Recovery of Road Network Elements Following a Relevant Event

The work proposes a quantitative model to determine the transport relevance of the different sections of a road network. In this way it is possible to define priorities for single network elements' restore following relevant events such as earthquakes. The model was developed within a project with the Italian Civil Protection Department following the earthquakes occurred in central Italy in 2016. The planning and programming of the interventions arises from the need to restore in the shortest time the ordinary people mobility within the territory; in the meantime it is also necessary to guarantee the operational needs of the Civil Protection, such as the transport and construction of temporary housing for the population. The proposed model considers the development of 5 quantitative indicators to characterize the transport importance of the network links deciding the priority of the interventions. These indicators take into account, for example, the link flow, the number of paths over a link and the Origin/Destination pairs satisfied. In this way it is possible to assess the impact that the restore of a network link could have on one or more routes and generally on the whole road network. The model can be considered as a Decision Support System that can be used to plan and schedule the restore of a road network according to specific needs.