Vulnerability Evaluation of the Highway Transportation System against Meteorological Disasters

Extreme weather events and meteorological disasters frequently occur owing to continuously changing global climate. These abnormal phenomena further cause increasingly serious traffic problems, such as infrastructure damage, traffic congestion, and traffic accidents, which make the road transport system operation vulnerably. Hence the vulnerability evaluation has recently aroused general interests in transportation research. This study aims to construct an effective methodology used for evaluating road transport system vulnerability against meteorological disasters from the view of risk analysis theory. Firstly, the paper reviews the research state of art of vulnerability and establishes the vulnerability evaluation system, which is based on three aspects including physical exposure, disaster loss sensitivity and resistance ability. Secondly, 13 evaluation indices are elaborately selected and quantified, and then the single vulnerability evaluation index is obtained by the combinational method of analytic hierarchy process and fuzzy comprehensive evaluation theory. Finally, this methodology is applied on Hangzhou regional road network and the results show that Hangzhou road transport vulnerability scores 55.3, and the vulnerability grade belongs to Middle, which indicates this road network is lightly vulnerable to meteorological disasters. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and peer-review under responsibility of Chinese Overseas Transportation Association (COTA).