Assessing robustness and identifying critical infrastructure in synchromodal transport network

Abstract

A synchromodal transport network is a transportation technique which aims to create more efficient and sustainable transportation plans, which utilizes different modes of transport, i.e., roadways, railways, and waterways synchronously. Synchromodal transport network is a complex network with interdependence. The aim of this thesis was to analyze the robustness and identify critical infrastructure in synchromodal transport network. In order to achieve the goal of the thesis. First, the synchromodal transport network is analyzed on the basis of its transportation characteristics and network topology. The analysis of transportation characteristics helped us to define a notion of node criticality. The node criticality quantifies the effect on the robustness of a transportation system due to the perturbation of an infrastructure. Then, a relationship is established between the node criticality and topological centrality metrics in order to quickly identify critical infrastructures in the synchromodal transport network. Lastly, a systematic framework is proposed and applied to the Dutch synchromodal transport network. The results from the case study are quite insightful. First, we observe that the distribution of node criticality exhibits a power-law distribution which implies that the Dutch synchromodal transport network tends to robustness against node perturbation. Second, we observe that the performance of the dutch synchromodal transport network is quite sensitive to the perturbation in the road network. Lastly, we identify that the weighted degree centrality, eigenvector centrality shows a high correlation with node criticality thus these centrality metrics can be used to identify critical infrastructure in the synchromodal transport network.