Fund Allocation for Transportation Network Recovery Following Natural Disasters

Abstract

Urban transportation infrastructure networks are highly sensitive to natural disasters yet critical for the success of rescue, recovery and renovation operations; as such, prompt restoration of such networks becomes of critical importance for disaster relief services. Interestingly, while fund allocation in infrastructure management has been extensively studied in the literature, most studies have focused on regular (scheduled) repair, maintenance and rehabilitation actions, largely ignoring fund allocation in emergency situations, a topic of considerable interest in practice. The present paper proposes a methodology for optimally allocating funds for repairing an urban infrastructure network following natural disasters using a three-stage genetic algorithm based approach. The methodology is tested with data from Athens, Greece, a densely populated urban area highly prone to earthquakes and with an extensive bridge network. Results indicate that the methodology proposed provides fast and reliable results that can be very useful in fund allocation decisions following natural disasters.