Assessment of a Transportation Infrastructure System using Graph Theory

In this paper, the topological properties of a transportation infrastructure system consisting of the highways and bridges in Newcastle County, Delaware as well as the interactions between them when subjected to disturbance were assessed. The disturbance was implemented through two disruption strategies while the response was quantified using the interaction response. Limiting values corresponding to the system response common to both strategies were obtained and used to refine the system properties until a resilient network was obtained. Thereafter, regression equations were developed for assessing the performance of the system in terms of its efficiency based on two networks selected from it. Consequently, the average efficiencies of the networks computed using these equations and based on test values were very similar and comparable to the actual network efficiency of 0.855. This showed that the regression equations are representative of the entire network and hence can be used to assess its performance.