Key Indicators for Enhancing Transportation Infrastructure Resilience to Urban Flooding

Abstract: Climate change, characterised by long-term shifts in global temperatures and weather patterns, poses a significant crisis. Its impacts are particularly evident in the increasing frequency and intensity of natural disasters. These disasters are primarily physical manifestations of Earth's dynamic processes, leading to phenomena such as earthquakes, cloud bursts, flooding, and wildfires, often triggering secondary disasters like landslides or mudslides. While the occurrence of such events is beyond human control, proactive measures can help mitigate their impacts and enhance preparedness. Given that the world relies on infrastructure systems such as transportation, water supply, electricity, and telecommunications, the damage caused by natural disasters has a cascading effect, hindering the movement of people and supplies and delaying vital assistance from reaching affected areas. The Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI) report shows a sharp increase in direct economic losses from disasters, where annual losses rose from $89 billion (2000-2009) to $169 billion (2010-2019) in the past decade. Therefore, addressing climate change and investing in resilient infrastructure is crucial for mitigating the escalating economic and social costs of natural disasters and building a more sustainable future.
In India, urban flooding has become a pressing issue in many states due to climate change and flawed urban planning, which leads to a disruption in the transportation network, resulting in either delay or full stop to transportation services. India's city-level transportation initiatives primarily focus on sustainable urban mobility with initiatives like the National Urban Transport Policy for sustainable transport systems, the Smart Cities Mission for integrated urban development with transportation improvements, and the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT) to boost city-level transportation connectivity. However, a critical question arises concerning the resilience of this expanding infrastructure to the increasing threat of urban flooding. As Indian cities grapple with rising urbanization and climate change, it is imperative to assess whether the planned infrastructure can perform, withstand and recover from the effects of a natural or man-made disaster.
The resilience of transportation infrastructures has been extensively researched over the past decade, making it especially important to focus on this in the case of India, as it is an emerging infrastructure in a developing country. This review consists of two main stages: identifying the most dominant infrastructure type in studies related to flood resilience and categorizing different factors for transportation infrastructure under resilience. The paper aims to identify critical indicators for Transportation Infrastructure Resilience (TIR) by synthesizing existing literature on resilient transportation, specifically focusing on flooding and urban flooding. This comprehensive review of transportation infrastructure resilience examines concepts, methodologies, frameworks, and indexes. Ultimately, the paper advocates for the development of transportation infrastructure based on resilience to address the challenges faced by cities globally and to establish long-term sustainable growth.