Assessing Risk and Resilience for Transportation Infrastructure in Canada

Goods producers in Canada rely on transportation networks to move raw materials and intermediate goods among production sites and finished goods to domestic and international markets. Firms in the retail, tourism and other service sectors also depend on transportation networks to assemble supplies and goods for sale and to bring customers to their facilities. Events that disable parts of the transportation network – ranging from weather emergencies to terrorist attacks – may therefore degrade economic productivity and in extreme cases may trigger economic crises. The ability of public and private providers of transportation infrastructure and services to mitigate and recover from such events is therefore an important determinant of aggregate economic performance.