An Assessment Tool for Enhancing Railway Organization Resilience Against Unexpected External Events

Abstract

Railway systems are increasingly vulnerable to unexpected external events, such as extreme weather caused by climate change, cyber-attacks targeting critical infrastructure. These disruptions threaten the continuity of railway operations and underscore the necessity for railway organizations to enhance their overall resilience. Various studies have looked into the assessing the infrastructure resilience, however, having a resilient infrastructure is insufficient. The back-end decision making or organizational resilient is also essential and it should also be considered. This paper presents a semi-qualitative assessment tool that integrates both technical and organizational attributes identified against the established 4R Resilience Framework: Robustness, Redundancy, Resourcefulness, and Rapidity. The tool employs a structured five-stage cycle, combining expert voting, Rank Ordered Centroid-Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (ROC-TOPSIS) methods to evaluate and determine the resilience level of each resilient attribute. Through surveys, the tool was validated for its relevance and practicality: over 60% of respondents affirmed the applicability of its resilience attributes and evaluation criteria, while 97% considered the tool at least moderately useful. The assessment process identifies low-performing attributes, which serve as guide for resilience-building initiatives and strategic planning. This work contributes an actionable approach to resilience assessment and planning that is adaptable for both national and international railway systems/organizations facing increasingly complex operational risks, and perhaps a universal assessment guideline.