Seismic resilience of bridge networks under adaptive recovery scenarios

In the face of catastrophic events like earthquakes, bridges are among the most vulnerable components in transportation networks. They play a crucial role in preventing infrastructure downtime during emergencies. Resilience is prominently dependent on the recovery process of the infrastructure to its pre-event condition. The resilience of a system is affected not only by the recovery time as a measure of recovery speed but also by the recovery trajectory as a measure of effectiveness. The recovery time and trajectory depend on the management of the recovery plans based on financial, human, and equipment resources and the practical cooperation of managers from different responsible organizations, which leads to the optimal prioritization of bridges. In addition, the recovery trajectory is important for economic and social effects such that recovery plans with the same recovery time but different recovery trajectories affect the economic and social dimensions of resilience differently. Furthermore, the trip patterns and users’ behaviors of the bridge network change with the progress of the recovery process and the re-establishment of connectivity between disconnected regions. There is a lack of research on the adaptive recovery process with different recovery times and trajectories considering the users’ behavior patterns and, consequently, the direct functional and indirect economic and social losses. This paper provides contributions along these lines and proposes an approach to quantify the impact of different recovery strategies on bridge network resilience, considering dynamic travel demand and implementing an adaptive recovery process.