Resilience assessment of waterway transportation systems: Combining system performance and recovery cost

•A simulation model is proposed for waterway transportation system (WTS).•A resilience indicator is proposed to evaluate the effectiveness of rescue plans.•The Yangtze estuary deepwater channel is used as a case study.•The WTS is subjected to different accident scenarios to analyze its resilience. Waterway transportation is considered as one of the most critical means of transportation. Risk management is one of the most important ways to ensure the safe operation of waterway transportation systems (WTS). Recently, the concept of resilience has been widely studied as it can be used to measure not only the system's reliability, but also its recoverability. The objectives of this study are to (1) analyze WTS resilience by introducing disruptions at different stages of the resilience recovery cycle through simulation and (2) introduce a comprehensive resilience indicator which comprises ship load, ship delay and recovery cost. A discrete-event based simulation model is developed to quantify WTS resilience. The Yangtze Estuary Deepwater Channel is used as the case study, and the automatic identification system (AIS) data of this channel in 2018 are collected and used as the input parameters of the simulation model. Different scenarios and experiments have been designed to analyze the resilience performance of the WTS when it encounters different accidents. Based on a real accident case, two rescue plans are designed for comparisons, and the results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed resilience indicator. Based on the analysis results several practical suggestions are recommended.