Transportation System Resilience: Research Roadmap and White Papers (2021)

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1   Although the need for a more effective set of short- and long-term transportation resil- ience strategies is increasingly obvious and urgent, many knowledge gaps and institutional barriers still exist. Finding creative ways to fill the gaps and overcome the barriers is a critical challenge for transportation leaders at the state and national levels. NCHRP Proj- ect 20-59(54), “Transportation System Resilience: Research Roadmap and White Papers,” had three objectives: 1. Highlight significant knowledge gaps within AASHTO and state departments of trans- portation (DOTs), 2. Recommend a 5-year research plan that addresses these gaps, and 3. Provide brief discussion papers of critical resilience-related issues facing senior trans- portation leaders today. NCHRP Research Report 975: Transportation System Resilience: Research Roadmap and White Papers presents the results of the research in three parts: • Part 1 documents the research effort and summarizes the research team’s conclusions and recommendations; • Part 2 provides the content of three discussion papers that were generated as white papers during the research, presented to industry peers, and revised into their final form for use by transportation agencies; and • Part 3 presents a 5-year research plan that reflects critical resilience research needs (i.e., knowledge gaps) gleaned from a diverse set of transportation policy makers, executives, professionals, and researchers. Working over a 3-year period, the research team identified more than 180 resilience research ideas from a variety of sources that included three national workshops, literature reviews of recently completed resilience research, participation in multiple resilience- oriented meetings, and discussions with selected thought leaders from TRB, AASHTO, FHWA, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and others. These research needs were then synthesized into 46 candidate projects and subsequently rated and ranked by an equally diverse set of participants. This effort yielded 26 recommended projects grouped in 10 topical subject areas (e.g., emergency management, asset management, design for resilience) with six change-management thrusts (e.g., policy and process, technology, insti- tutional focus, community engagement). The resulting roadmap is a portfolio of 26 recom- mended projects and represents a potential research investment ranging from $10,750,000 to $16,750,000. The roadmap is not intended as a diktat for research investment. Rather, it aims to be an enabling tool meant to shape the ongoing research efforts and as input for FHWA, AASHTO, TRB, individual state DOTs, and others to plot a forward course as they move ahead with S U M M A R Y Transportation System Resilience: Research Roadmap and White Papers

2 Transportation System Resilience: Research Roadmap and White Papers their respective resilience-related initiatives. This roadmap presents a mechanism by which the transportation community can work towards a consensus concerning those invest- ments that will significantly advance the understanding, policy, and practice of transporta- tion resilience. The discussion papers presented in Part 2 of this report bear additional comment. The panel for NCHRP Project 20-59, “Surface Transportation Security and Resilience Research,” also directed the research team to prepare three papers to promote discussion among trans- portation policy makers and executives. The three papers—Understanding Transportation Resilience: An Environmental Perspective, Understanding Transportation Resilience: An Economic Perspective, and Understanding Transportation Resilience: A Cyber Perspective— were developed and presented at various industry meetings during the course of the research. As finalized for this report, the papers reflect revisions based on the feedback received at those meetings and the panel’s instruction to create discussion papers that agency leaders can use as tools to engage both peers and elected or appointed officials who may be unfamiliar with the conversation surrounding transportation resilience. Each discussion paper addresses three crucial questions that often are posed by senior leaders: 1. What is the issue at hand defined in concrete terms that I understand? 2. Why is this issue critical or important to my agency and me? 3. What do you want me to do about it? Not surprisingly, several common themes emerged in the drafting of these papers. The following discussion points were derived from common barriers that organizations identi- fied as being frequently encountered as they attempt to develop and introduce more formal resilience management approaches. Given the purpose of the discussion papers, the discus- sion points have been framed as a series of direct questions that are designed to stimulate conversation, self-assessment, and concrete action-taking. The questions listed are neither exhaustive nor representative of all agencies, and agencies are encouraged to modify them to suit local priorities and circumstances. • How have the impacts of environmental change affected your state’s transportation mis- sion in the past? What environmental impacts do you project affecting your full set of modal assets, networks, and systems over the next 5 years, 10 years, and 50 years? Have you considered beneficial aspects as well as harmful ones? Do you know the current and projected flooding risk and subsequent loss of value for your system? Do you know how this risk affects individual assets (e.g., bridges), communities, corridors, and regional, statewide, or multistate areas? • Do you know the current and projected cyber risks to your agency and the consequences of the loss of products and services for your system and its users? Do you know how these risks impact travel, safety, environmental quality, and economic activity at community, regional, statewide, or multistate levels? • Do you have policies and plans in place that address these impacts from maintenance and system operations, program delivery, and long-range planning perspectives? • Have you implemented formal asset management, performance management, and risk management approaches in your agency? Are these functions coordinated with each other? Are they coordinated with your traditional long-range planning, program delivery, and operations functions? Have you integrated resilience requirements in these manage- ment systems?

Summary 3   • Do you have a strategy for overcoming the polarization and politicization of conten- tious resilience topics such as climate change, sustainability, environmental justice, and the like? • Do you have a plan for integrating resilience into your agency’s culture, mission, cus- tomer service objectives, business planning priorities, asset performance measures, and other measurable priorities? • Environmental and other disasters take a human toll on employees. Are you prepared for post-disaster employee trauma, burnout, absenteeism, turnover, location stress, and other effects? • How will you resolve the conflict between your resilience objectives, policies, procedures, and priorities and those of other agencies or communities? How will you resolve the conflicts between your resilience decisions and other agency imperatives and priorities? • Do you participate in community and statewide planning initiatives reflecting integrated incident response, disaster recovery, continuity of government, and continuity of opera- tions, including mitigation priorities? Does this participation foster transparent com- munication, collaborative and cooperative partnerships between elected officials, your agency’s leadership, key technology providers, and others? Do you know who you can rely on in a crisis? Do you know who relies on you? • Are you aware of and in support of FHWA, AASHTO, TRB, and NIST resilience initia- tives? Are you investing in resilience-focused education and training for your executive staff, your employees, and your business partners? • What will it take for you to personally own this issue?