Characterizing resilience of flood-disrupted dynamic transportation network through the lens of link reliability and stability

Traffic congestion occurs daily but the transportation network still functions to meet people’s travel needs. We propose that a road meets operation requirements as long as the quality of its links (i.e., speed or travel time) satisfies an acceptable threshold. This paper incorporates the link reliability concept into the road travel performance using the link quality threshold to offer new perspectives on network resilience measurement. We introduce two aggregated macroscopic metrics: network reliability scale index, and network stability, based on the link reliability to quantify the road travel performance change in facing external disturbance. We use the temporal traffic-embedded Harris County, TX transportation network during the 2017 Hurricane Harvey as a case study. We show that the proposed metrics can well capture the transportation network performance variation during flooding. Also, we develop an integrated resilience metric that encapsulates the network resistance, recoverability, and rapidity in facing flooding. The results move us closer to better understanding transportation network resilience behavior in different link quality conditions (q). The findings of this research also provide important insights for city planners and traffic operators to examine transportation network resilience through a reliability and stability lens. •Empirical traffic during disaster reveals unique reliability and stability pattern.•Link reliability captures transportation network resilience reduction and recovery.•Distribution of all link’s dysfunction time ratio follows a power-law distribution.•Fluctuation of link reliability exceeds the normal range during Hurricane Harvey.•Each city’s transportation resilience is differently sensitive to varying link quality thresholds.