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

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P A R T   1 Research Overview

7   Transportation agencies working across all modes continue to grapple with the dawning real- ization that they cannot plan, build, or operate their respective infrastructures to achieve and maintain the degree of reliable and resilient service expected by society and its elected represen- tatives using the approaches, technologies, and mindsets of the past. TRB’s Critical Issues in Transportation 2019 report tacitly recognized this assertion and con- cluded the following (TRB Executive Committee 2018): [R]ecent intense floods, superstorms, and hurricanes have disrupted the lives of millions and caused billions of dollars worth of damage. Combined with the vulnerability of transportation facilities to terrorism, these events have made public and private officials acutely aware of the need to identify com- munity vulnerabilities and plan for responses to natural and human-caused disasters, including near- and long-term climate change effects on sea-level rise, droughts, forest fires, and heatwaves. The report also posed 14 critical questions that outline the dimensions of these vulnerabilities (TRB Executive Committee 2018): 1. How can strategies appropriate for each mode be developed to apply layers of security without exces- sively impeding the movements of passengers and goods? 2. What kinds of decision-making tools can best help transportation agencies make appropriate deci- sions regarding climate change and terrorism in a risk management framework? 3. How can risk management approaches be incorporated into transportation planning and decision making? 4. How can results from climate models be translated into changes in design standards for severe weather events? 5. Which policies, programs, research topics, and investments can and should be undertaken to adapt existing transportation facilities and systems to rising sea levels, stronger storm surges, more fre- quent flooding, and other powerful and damaging extremes of weather? 6. How can experiences of communities and states that are beginning to adapt and change be best evaluated and shared? 7. In light of the inability to be precise about the scale and timing of future impacts, how can funding policies, designs, and standards be modified to build in flexibility to allow for needed adaptation, including the rebuilding of more resilient infrastructure after infrastructure is damaged or destroyed? 8. What evidence would convince policy makers and the public of the need to incur the extra, near-term costs of adaptive management? 9. What are feasible strategies for defending or retreating from the high-risk areas and avoiding continued investment in the most vulnerable ones? 10. How can security forces most effectively mitigate the security risk from drones? 11. What capabilities will public agencies need to verify whether cybersecurity is being managed effectively? 12. What are the best practices, how can they be shared, and what role should the public sector play in overseeing and enhancing cybersecurity? 13. How can these vulnerabilities be overcome or managed effectively? 14. What strategies are needed for better preparation, response, communication, and sheltering-in-place on a regional basis? Background

8 Transportation System Resilience: Research Roadmap and White Papers Implicit in these questions were two assumptions: (1) The industry lacks certain knowledge necessary to improve the security, reliability, and resilience of transportation across all modes, and (2) Key decision makers lack the local knowledge and context to improve individual agency approaches to security and resilience. The objectives of NCHRP Project 20-59(54), “Transportation System Resilience: Research Roadmap and White Papers,” addressed both issues. The research strategy would be designed to fill high-priority knowledge and practice gaps in the industry, and the project would provide a set of background materials designed to introduce individual policy makers to certain aspects of this challenge. In 2016, with support from NCHRP Project 20-59(51)C, “Research Support for Imple- menting Security, Emergency Management, and Infrastructure Protection at State Transpor- tation Agencies,” the AASHTO Special Committee on Transportation Security and Emergency Management (SCOTSEM) determined a more strategic approach to its NCHRP research project endorsements. That strategy, documented in the 2017 AASHTO report Understanding Transportation Resilience: A 2016–2018 Roadmap for Security, Emergency Management, and Infrastructure Protection in Transportation Resilience (Fletcher and Ekern 2017), brought a focused set of recommendations to transportation security, infrastructure protection, emer- gency management, and transportation resilience research. Two recommended actions in that report—(1) Develop a follow-on research roadmap for the period 2020–2025, and (2) Provide high-level discussion papers on certain aspects of transportation resilience—were subsequently combined into NCHRP Project 20-59(54). NCHRP Research Report 975 documents the approach, findings, and recommendations of NCHRP Project 20-59(54) and summarizes major points contained in the three white papers that were first developed and presented as part of the research, then refined into discussion papers at the direction of the project panel. The three papers are: • Understanding Transportation Resilience: An Environmental Perspective, • Understanding Transportation Resilience: An Economic Perspective, and • Understanding Transportation Resilience: A Cyber Perspective. Each 12–15 page paper was prepared for transportation policy makers and executives to pro- vide a mechanism by which they can engage their peers, together with elected and appointed officials, who may be unfamiliar with the conversation surrounding transportation resilience. The papers were prepared at the direction of the NCHRP Surface Transportation Security and Resilience Panel (Panel 20-59), which had selected the three specific transportation resilience topics for more in-depth treatment. Although the papers reflect a uniform style and tone, each was developed separately with no attempt to harmonize or synthesize their findings. NCHRP Research Report 975 thus presents an integrated overview of the 2016–2018 roadmap report together with the three discussion papers, and in Part 3 introduces the new 2020–2025 Transportation System Resilience Research Roadmap.

9   The research team undertook this work over 34 months on two major concurrent tracks. The objective of the first track was to develop a 5-year research roadmap intended for use by researchers, research funding sponsors, and agency implementers. The objective of the second track focused on preparing three white papers (discussion papers) dealing with environmental, economic, and cyber aspects of transportation resilience. The research team consciously conducted all project activities openly and transparently, involving and acknowledging the diverse interests of research consumers, which included those agencies implementing NCHRP research results, research sponsors, and the research commu- nity. The research team acted as facilitators and documenters of this consensus-oriented process. The first task involved identifying and prioritizing research needs (i.e., topics in transpor- tation security, infrastructure protection, emergency management, and transportation resil- ience for which there was a [perceived] lack of transportation sector knowledge). This task was accomplished in two phases. The first phase was completed before the October 2018 Transpor- tation Resilience Innovation Summit and Exchange (RISE) conference, and the second phase was completed after the RISE meeting. The needs identification task began with a literature search of pertinent suggestions for follow-on research documented in the “additional research” sections of the final reports of NCHRP projects spanning the period 2008 to 2018. To gather input from the broader transportation and research community, pre- and post- RISE research needs forms were designed and distributed in hardcopy, by email, and through an online survey mechanism. Supplementing the needs submission process, the research team also gave multiple briefings at AASHTO and TRB meetings throughout 2017 and 2018 and conducted two research needs workshops—one at the 96th TRB Annual Meeting in 2017 and one at the 97th TRB Annual Meeting in 2018. During these workshops, the research team collected and compiled needs expressed by the attendees. The research team also participated in the 2018 RISE meeting, pre- senting briefings on the project and soliciting additional needs. In total, more than 180 specific needs were identified from nine source categories. This set of needs was then community-rated and ranked to determine the top 125 high-interest research needs in 10 subject matter areas (e.g., emergency management, cybersecurity, community resil- ience, asset management). These top-rated needs were synthesized into 46 candidate project concepts. The 46 candidate concepts were again community-rated and ranked, yielding 26 high-priority recommendations for the roadmap for the funding period 2020–2025 (see Part 3). Research Approach

10 Transportation System Resilience: Research Roadmap and White Papers Organizing the recommendations based on a 5-year strategy reflected a broad-based con- sensus to address knowledge gaps that were perceived as high-priority and that meeting par- ticipants considered necessary to improve the resilience of the agency, the transportation system, and the community. In creating the discussion papers, the research team was tasked to prepare executive-level white papers on special topics related to transportation resilience. The three papers were: 1. Understanding Transportation Resilience: An Environmental Perspective, focusing on sea-level rise and extreme weather (i.e., climate change) issues; 2. Understanding Transportation Resilience: An Economic Perspective, focusing on the economics of resilience and the economic function of resilience; and 3. Understanding Transportation Resilience: A Cyber Perspective, focusing on cyber systems resilience. Although the papers reflected the editorial perspective of the co-authors, each paper incor- porated topical input from U.S. DOT-, FHWA-, and DHS-published materials; industry subject matter experts; and the project team’s literature review. All three papers were—and are—intended for executive-level transportation professionals, but by extension the papers were designed to provide transportation agencies a mechanism to engage elected and appointed officials who might be new to or unfamiliar with issues sur- rounding resilience. This audience and purpose dictated that the treatment of each topic be both broad and succinct. The three papers were discussed together at the project’s Interim Panel Meeting on September 24, 2017, and at the 2017 AASHTO Resiliency Peer Exchange on Extreme Weather and Climate Impacts on November 6–7, 2017. The roadmap was briefed at the 2017 RISE meeting. All three papers complemented and informed the discussion and debate at the 2018 RISE meeting. The research team had previously produced CEO-focused material that suggested that C-level (chief) executives are primarily interested in three critical questions: 1. What is the topic 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? Guided by this insight, the research team then developed short (12–15 page) discussion papers. The discussion papers employed a construct adapted from the 2006 National Infra- structure Protection Plan (NIPP) Risk Management Framework which called on each sector to identify those functions, assets, networks, systems, and people (FANSP) that make up the nation’s critical infrastructure and key resources (CI/KR) (see Table 1-1). The FANSP frame- work was further elaborated on in the May 2007 Transportation Systems: Critical Infrastruc- ture and Key Resources Sector-Specific Plan as Input to the National Infrastructure Protection Plan, hereafter called the CI/KR SSP for NIPP (DHS 2007). Each discussion paper was designed to explore interdependencies associated with the func- tions, assets, networks, systems, and people at a state DOT that are impacted by actions or inactions taken to build resiliency around that particular subject area. The discussion papers also addressed the following questions of interest to transportation agency leaders: • What can a state DOT do now or worry about when it comes to creating resiliency against extreme weather and/or sea-level rise, and how does that DOT harness and augment its functions, assets, networks, systems, and people to sustain operations through changes in the weather?

Research Approach 11   • What can a state DOT do now or worry about when it comes to a resilient economy in which a state DOT not only contributes to but also benefits from a vibrant commerce environment? What are the functions, assets, networks, and systems that are enhanced through this resiliency? • What can a state DOT do now or worry about when it comes to resilient cyber systems with respect to critical functions, assets, networks, systems, and people? Given the dynamic nature of the research topics, the expectations of the panel that the greatest number of viewpoints be represented in the work products, and the desire of the panel to contin- uously socialize the research, the research team developed and executed an engagement strategy encompassing attendance and participation in various events to gather information, present research findings, engage with industry leaders, and accomplish other activities necessary to support the project (Table 1-2). Each engagement had multiple objectives in support of multiple project tasks. In general, the earlier engagements focused on information gathering, building awareness, motivating interest, and improving knowledge about resilience, the NIPP, the research roadmap, and other associated topics. A significant emphasis of the 2017 activities was on identifying and engaging with senior leaders from transportation agencies and other thought leaders in the industry. Engagements in 2018 leading up to the RISE meeting focused more on communicating the results of the research to this audience to build interest, involvement, and willingness to invest in the recommendations of the research roadmap. Engagement activities held during the second stage of the project also were used to support the development and refinement of the research roadmap. FUNCTIONS The assignments, tasks, and positions in a state DOT that are critical to the performance of continued transportation service through any hazard or disruption ASSETS The infrastructure, equipment, resources, tools, vehicles, hardware, roadways, tunnels, and facilities owned and operated by a state DOT to ensure the continued safe transport of goods and people through any hazard or disruption NETWORKS The relationships maintained by a state DOT with local municipalities, contractors, the private sector, and other branches of local, state, and federal government to ensure continuity of transportation operations through any hazard or disruption SYSTEMS The variety of critical technology platforms and applications, including all software utilities and electronic forms of data, utilized by state DOT personnel to operate assets and infrastructure, support functional continuity, and enable network communication and reliability through any hazard or disruption PEOPLE The inherently necessary human resources and personnel needed by a state DOT to ensure transportation service is provided through any hazard or disruption Table 1-1. FANSP framework.

12 Transportation System Resilience: Research Roadmap and White Papers No. Engagement Date City 2017 1. TRB Annual Meeting January 2017 Washington, DC 2. ABR10 Mid-Year Meeting* June 2017 Washington, DC 3. SCOTSEM Annual Meeting August 2017 Houston, TX 4. 20-59(54) Interim Panel Meeting October 2017 Phoenix, AZ 5. AASHTO Resiliency Peer Exchange November 2017 Washington, DC 2018 6. TRB Annual Meeting January 2018 Washington, DC 7. CTSSR Steering Committee Meeting** May 2018 Franklin, TN 8. ABR10 Mid-Year Meeting June 2018 Washington, DC 9. CTSSR Annual Meeting July 2018 San Diego, CA 10. Transportation RISE Conference October 2018 Denver, CO 11. Project 20-59(54) Interim Panel Meeting October 2018 Denver, CO 2019 12. TRB Annual Meeting January 2019 Washington, DC 13. ABR10 Mid-Year Meeting June 2019 Washington, DC 14. CTSSR Annual Meeting August 2019 Jackson, WY * ABR10 = TRB’s Committee on Critical Transportation Infrastructure Protection (now AMR10). ** CTSSR = AASHTO’s Committee on Transportation Systems Security and Resilience. Table 1-2. NCHRP Project 20-59(54) engagement schedule.

13   The findings of the research project reflect the research team’s attempt to both compile the suggested research needs into a list of topics and to rank them by priority based on input from the transportation community. Table 1-3 presents the community rating and ranking values of the 26 roadmap projects recommended for the period 2020–2025. The roadmap (Part 3 of this report) provides additional information about each project, including project descriptions, objectives, and estimated costs. Table 1-4 illustrates the breadth of concepts that the trans- portation community currently includes under the umbrella term, resilience, and includes the project number prefix codes. When requesting suggested research topics and when asking members of the transporta- tion community to rate topics, the research team endeavored to consolidate the information so it could be presented and rated as consistently as possible. Guiding this effort the research question was, “Why did respondents rate projects the way they did?” Analyzing this question yielded many interpretations of candidate ratings, which can be interpreted as a reflection of the evolving nature of resilience. DOTs are still wrestling with the fundamental nature of resilience and how to accommodate it within their organizations. On the one hand, clear evidence exists that AASHTO and TRB no longer equate resilience narrowly with emergency management activities or extreme weather operations. On the other hand, Table 1-4 illustrates the breadth of concepts that the transportation community currently includes under the umbrella term of resilience. A balanced research, development, and deployment program contains a mixture of distinct overlapping and interacting thrusts or emphasis areas, as illustrated in Table 1-5. Project oppor- tunities dealing with changes to workflow, workforce, and community engagement have been well represented among the top-ranked candidates, while more basic research and deployment projects (i.e., the programmatic “tails”) are less represented. This distribution appears to reflect the industry’s desire to incorporate resilience into existing lines of business as opposed to envi- sioning a new mission with new structures as was done a generation ago with transportation security. Resilience has been defined as “the ability to prepare and plan for, absorb, recover from, or more successfully adapt to adverse events” (Fletcher and Ekern, 2017). Given that the evolving sense of the phrase “adverse events” is understood to include “disruptive forces,” a set of long- term influences on transportation requires thoughtful attention. Although the specific list of adverse events may vary from state to state, disruptive forces are already creating ripples adverse to the long-term status quo once enjoyed by the industry (Table 1-6). Disruptions caused by these forces are already being felt by the transportation industry, and these effects are only starting to manifest themselves. Each of these disruptions will require a great deal of preparation, planning, and adapting by AASHTO and its member states. Project Findings

14 Transportation System Resilience: Research Roadmap and White Papers * Table I-4 explains the prefix codes that were assigned when identifying individual items. ** Ranks listed reflect ties. No. Item * Title Rating Rank ** 1. DR-05 Integrating Resilience into Transportation Project Development 3.91 1 2. ER-02 Economic Benefits from Making Investments in Resilient Transportation Assets 3.75 2 3. DR-04 Design Guidance and Standards for Resilience 3.72 3 4. AM-01 Assessing and Managing the Vulnerability of Transportation Assets 3.71 4 5. AM-03 Incorporating Resilience in National Programs 3.68 5 6. EM-05 Streamlining the Damage Assessment Process 3.53 6 7. AM-02 Funding and Financing Resilience Adaptation 3.48 7 8. DR-01 Using Improved Hydrological Forecasting to Improve Transportation Resilience 3.44 8 9. PM-01 Resilience Performance Measures: A Quantitative Approach 3.36 9 10. CR-02 Cyber Risk Transfer Strategies 3.30 10 11. II-02 Transportation Infrastructure Interdependencies Risk Analysis and Modeling 3.24 11 12. CO-02 Resiliency Knowledge Base 3.21 12 13. EM-07 Effective Practices in Extreme Weather Response 3.18 13 14. II-01 Maintaining Resilience in a Multi-modal Transportation System 3.16 14 15. HF-01 Building a Resilient Work Force in State DOTs 3.15 15 16. AM-04 Assessing Resilience Frameworks 3.09 16 17. PM-03 Frameworks for Measuring Transportation Resilience 3.06 17 18. CO-05 Organizational Resiliency: Moving from Recovery to Retrenchment 3.06 17 19. CR-04 Assessing the Resilience of GPS-based Applications in Transportation 3.03 19 20. EM-02 New Technologies for Comprehensive Debris Management 3.03 19 21. EM-10 Emergency Project Contracting Guidelines 3.03 19 22. CR-05 Deploying the NIST Cybersecurity Framework in State DOTs 3.03 19 23. EM-03 Multi-Agency Emergency Preparedness 3.03 19 24. RM-01 A New Tool Assessing the Value of Resiliency Alternatives by State DOTs 3.03 19 25. EM-08 Emergency Management Training for Transportation Workers 3.00 25 26. CO-03 Restoring Access: Post-disaster Transportation Equity 3.00 25 Table 1-3. Top-ranked resilience research projects.

Project Findings 15   Disruptive Force Count Percentage Anthropocene (climate change, sea-level rise, extreme weather) 12 67% Megacities/Smart Cities 3 17% Disruptive Technology (e.g., IoT, AI, and 5G broadband) 2 11% Knowledge, Trust, Resource, and Resilience Inequities 1 6% Post-Carbon Society 0 0% Post-Ownership or Sharing Society 0 0% Total 18 100%* IoT = The Internet of Things; AI = artificial intelligence; 5G = fifth generation. * Total percentage reflects rounding. Table 1-6. Top-ranked candidate projects addressing disruptive forces. Subject Prefix Code Count Percentage Emergency Management EM 6 23% Asset Management AM 4 15% Design for Resilience DR 3 12% Community Resilience CO 3 12% Cyber Resilience CR 3 12% Infrastructure Interdependencies II 2 8% Performance Measures PM 2 8% Economics of Resilience ER 1 4% Human and Social Factors HF 1 4% Risk Management RM 1 4% Total 26 100% Table 1-4. Top-ranked candidate projects, by subject. Topic Count Percentage Policy, Rules, Process, and Funding 8 31% Tools and Technical Systems 6 23% Institutional Focus 5 19% Community Engagement 5 19% Investing in Innovation 1 4% Widespread Deployment 1 4% Total 26 100% Table 1-5. Top-ranked candidate projects, by topic.

16 Transportation System Resilience: Research Roadmap and White Papers A quick perusal of the top-ranked candidate projects in Table 1-5 highlights that—except for extreme weather events—many potentially disruptive forces threaten transportation services but are not yet seen as research topics of interest, possibly because they have not yet been tied to the idea of resilience within the DOTs. The following observations are offered to assist in the interpretation of the polling and selec- tion processes conducted in this research: 1. Participants in the identification of the needs, needs ranking, candidate project develop- ment, and projects ranking processes made up a representative sample of research sponsors, research users, and researchers. 2. Needs ratings and candidate projects ratings appeared to be unbiased and within expected distributions. The researchers did not detect any attempt to skew the results in favor of some predetermined outcome. 3. Top-ranked candidate projects encompassed a variety of DOT program areas. As such, these candidate projects could be used by several AASHTO committees for possible problem state- ment development, endorsement, and submission. 4. Top-ranked candidate projects addressed multiple aspects of the program management process. 5. Each top-ranked candidate project was assumed to incrementally advance resilience practices within DOTs and contribute to the overall resiliency of the transportation system; however, the researchers were unable to discover any strategic or synergistic effects of the list taken as a whole. 6. Similarly, because the objectives of each candidate project appeared to be independent of each other, there were no apparent relationships among the projects (i.e., precedence, concurrency). 7. Several top-ranked candidate projects appeared to be more suited to synthesis projects. 8. Implementation products and activities could be incorporated into specific statements of work, but only one of the top-ranked candidate projects had an implementation focus (EM-08 Emergency Management Training for Transportation Workers). 9. The final list of 26 recommended projects represents a potential program investment ranging from $10,750,000 to $16,750,000. Highlights of the essential points from each of the three discussion papers are reproduced for convenience in Table 1-7.

Understanding Transportation Resilience: An Environmental Perspective Understanding Transportation Resilience: An Economic Perspective Understanding Transportation Resilience: A Cyber Perspective • Transportation infrastructure resilience refers to the ability of the transportation system to recover from or adapt to significant disruptive events. One benchmark of a resilient system is to have a formal integrated investment and operational management strategy designed to maintain or restore functionality that would otherwise be compromised. • Resilience management has short-term (hours to months), intermediate (years to decades), and long- range (decades and longer) dimensions that roughly correspond to operations, engineering, and planning responsibilities. These dimensions are dynamic and interrelated. • Resilience management leverages pre-existing risk management frameworks, although resilience and risk are not the same things. Resilience-enhancing recommendations are reflected in updated emergency operations plans, revisions to engineering standards, and in statewide and metropolitan transportation planning processes. • The Transportation Infrastructure Sector is vulnerable to a wide range of environmental (i.e., meteorological, climatic, geologic, and cosmic) hazards. No region or mode of transportation is immune, although specific risks vary greatly by agency, location, and mode. • Many of these hazards are related to the earth’s climate, resulting in increasingly severe or unusual weather as the “new normal.” The greatest climate- related risks to transportation are extreme heat, heavy downpours, and rising sea levels, all of which are projected to increase in the coming decades. • Environmental disasters resulting from these phenomena reduce system reliability and performance, drive up user costs, accelerate • Although the nation’s transportation systems are generally reliable, disruptions to transportation services are becoming more frequent, are of longer duration, are affecting more people, and are increasingly more expensive to resolve. • The most common cause of these disruptions is flooding—including seasonal flooding, storm- related flooding, and tidal flooding (98% of all U.S. counties have experienced flooding at some point in their history). • Sea-level rise will result in increased tidal flooding, storm surges, and greater wave action, and is projected to become the greatest threat to all U.S. coastal regions in the future. The consequences of this climate-related phenomenon will affect all states to varying degrees. • In all cases, the lack of transportation systems’ resiliency to these threats becomes an impediment to accomplishing all transportation system objectives over all planning horizons. Although short-term weather operations and traffic incident responses have improved dramatically over the past 15 years, a systemic lack of common approaches to transportation resilience is imperiling long-range, multi-agency investments. • Resilience is not an independent systems objective but is an objectives multiplier affecting all other community and agency transportation objectives, such as system availability, accessibility, connectivity, safety, and so forth. • State DOTs play a supporting role in the local and regional community development and long-range planning processes that ultimately determine transportation resilience priorities. • For the past 60 years, state DOTs have embraced cyber-driven innovation. • Over that period, DOTs have invested in three generations of overlapping technology: (1) IT, or information technology (i.e., data processing); (2) OT, or operational technology (i.e., control systems); and (3) CT, or consumer technology (i.e., technology for personal use). • Even as technology-enabled transportation has produced many benefits to these agencies and the nation, each wave of innovation has introduced greater risk to the transportation system as users have grown increasingly dependent on increasingly vulnerable and complex technologies over which DOTs have steadily lost control. • In response, DOTs are deploying two complementary strategies—cybersecurity and cyber resilience—to improve performance, reduce risk, and maintain the trust of their communities. • Cybersecurity does not have the same mission as cyber resilience. Cybersecurity focuses on protecting the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data; cyber resilience focuses on preserving or restoring transportation and agency operations. • Cyber resilience is not a “thing.” Instead, it is a consequence of political, strategic, and operational decisions made by elected officials and senior agency managers and is embedded in agency business policies, plans, processes, and workflows. Bonus: Cyber resilience is not primarily a technical problem. Rather, it is an ongoing predicament that requires constant management and oversight. Table 1-7. Highlights: Key points from the three white papers. (continued on next page)

Understanding Transportation Resilience: An Environmental Perspective Understanding Transportation Resilience: An Economic Perspective Understanding Transportation Resilience: A Cyber Perspective deterioration, and increase total infrastructure life- cycle costs. • Additionally, weather-related disruptions or loss of services, particularly when viewed as preventable, erode public trust, impact local and regional economies, and generate significant criticism from elected officials, the media, and the traveling public. • During the 20th century, policy promised that the nation would do whatever necessary to repair and restore damaged infrastructure using a combination of federal, state, and local resources. The 21st- century reality is that the severity and frequency of extreme events are increasing, and many communities can no longer rely on outside resources to be made whole. • A national, “one-size-fits-all” resilience strategy is neither desirable nor achievable. The emerging, resource-rich, urban “megaregions” enjoy many more resilience options than do “underperforming,” mostly rural, regions. This gap between the “haves” and the “have-nots” is projected to widen over the next century. • Although the need for a more-effective set of short- and long-term resilience strategies is increasingly obvious and urgent, many political, institutional, scientific, and technical barriers exist. Finding creative ways to overcome these barriers is a critical challenge for transportation leadership. • DOTs cannot go it alone. Although the DOT may be the designated lead agency for transportation infrastructure, collaborative and cooperative community-based initiatives are crucial. • State DOTs and other agencies need to be mindful that certain resilience strategies, in general, may be unequally available and therefore inherently inequitable. Some communities have greater access to resources, giving them a wider range of options. Moreover, allocating public funding based on risk alone may “reward” some places at the expense of others. • Improving the resilience of the nation’s transportation systems is undeniably a benefit to society, and a precautionary approach to potential adverse events (i.e., hazard mitigation) is justified in many situations. However, the decision maker needs to balance the proportionality of the risk with the cost and feasibility of other competing investment opportunities and benefits. Integrating resilience into structured risk-based asset management programs provides one mechanism to accomplish this. • Senior DOT leadership needs to establish, promote, and enhance those core values associated with resilience in general and cyber resilience in particular. • The starting point for cyber resilience planning is to assume that cyber incidents will occur and will degrade, disable, or destroy not only digital assets but parts of the physical transportation infrastructure as well. • Cyber incidents are becoming more frequent, more disruptive, and more costly, and DOTs no longer have the ability or the resources to mitigate this situation on their own. • Although DOTs have significant roles to play in restoring transportation services and functions after a cyber incident, in many cases the DOT will not be the lead agency, and DOTs will need to closely coordinate, collaborate, and communicate with others. Table 1-7. (Continued).

19   During the prosecution of the research, the research team arrived at the following 10 conclu- sions regarding transportation resilience that augment the discussion. 1. The global transportation system is fundamentally resilient and reliable. Since the 1980s, innovative business practices such as just-in-time manufacturing, just-in-time retailing, and e-commerce (i.e., online retail) have revolutionized the global economy. Each of these innovations depends on reliable and resilient supply chains that rely on the existing global transportation infrastructure. 2. It is not possible to engineer one’s way to resilience. Although many transportation resil- ience strategies are designed to defend against disruption of service or adapt the infrastruc- ture to environmental changes, events will always occur that exceed the system’s design. For example, Hurricane Harvey (August 17–September 2, 2017) was determined to be a 250,000-year storm. No feasible stormwater management system could have prepared for that situation. Likewise, sustained winds from Hurricane Irma (August 30–September 17, 2017) were estimated to be more than 185 mph when the storm hit the island of Barbuda. No building code on earth requires structures to withstand sustained winds of this strength. 3. Adverse weather conditions are not the most serious environmental threats to transporta- tion. Although winter storms, high winds, icing, fog, heatwaves, and other weather condi- tions can disrupt travel, flooding is by far the most frequent and expensive environmental hazard to the infrastructure. According to an article published by the Pew Charitable Trusts (Lightbody 2017), [f]looding is the costliest and most common natural disaster in the U.S., claiming lives, inflicting financial losses on households and businesses, and straining the government agencies that provide flood response and relief. From 1980 to 2013, flooding cost Americans more than $260 billion in damage; from 2006 to 2015, federal flood insurance claims averaged $1.9 billion annually. The pattern continued in 2016, with the federal government declaring 36 disasters involving floods or hurricanes. However, the most serious environmental long-range threat is sea-level rise. Almost the entire U.S. coastline will be affected to some degree, experiencing elevated water levels in the range of 1–8 feet depending on location, resulting in more frequent tidal flooding, greater storm surges, and more damaging wave action. 4. “All-hazards” risk mitigation does not result in “all-purpose” resilience. Overlaps between risk management practices and resilience management exist, and the two approaches are complementary, but they are not identical. Risk management is focused on reducing the likelihood or consequences of specific hazards whereas resilience management is geared towards minimizing disruptions to or restoring the loss of service due to adverse or changing conditions. 5. DOTs have made significant investments in transportation resilience. Although efforts have not specifically been labeled as such, over the past 15 years, DOTs and their partner Conclusions and Recommendations

20 Transportation System Resilience: Research Roadmap and White Papers organizations have made a great deal of progress in improving the resilience of the system. Scalable, adaptive approaches to emergency operations and incident management are now operationalized in every state. New threats (e.g., sea-level rise) are recognized by those affected, and adaptation strategies are evolving. However, the severity, duration, and extent of disruptive events all are increasing and challenging the abilities of communities to respond. 6. The entire system does not need to be resilient to every potential adversity. If this condi- tion were even possible, the nation couldn’t afford the investment. Transportation resilience doesn’t occur in a vacuum. Different communities face different threats and have differing degrees of risk tolerance, differing priorities, and differing access to prevention and recovery resources. What works well in Norfolk, Virginia, may not translate to the Shenandoah Valley. As a general rule, however, the greatest threat to transportation infrastructure is flooding. Depending on location, flooding may be a consequence of storm surge, excessive rainfall, king tides, or dam or levee failure. 7. The DOT is not the lead resilience agency in the community. The old first responder adage, “no roads, no codes” is undeniably true, and maintaining or restoring transportation lifelines is a crucial component of disaster response and recovery; nonetheless, access and connec- tivity priorities are best established cooperatively with other critical infrastructure users (e.g., law enforcement, health care providers, utilities). In most cases, the DOT will not be the lead agency responsible for overall rescue and recovery operations. 8. Transportation resilience is not the most important investment a community or state can make. There is a high level of dependence by other lifeline utilities on the transportation net- works and vice versa. An interruption of the road network may well result in the consequen- tial loss of another service. Conversely, disruptions to other infrastructures, particularly the fuel supply, electric power, and communications infrastructures, may render the transpor- tation network ineffective or unavailable. Communities and states need to determine local investment priorities for all infrastructures, taking local interdependencies into account. 9. Resilience is not just emergency operations “on steroids.” Although the most visible evidence of transportation resilience is most often seen during severe weather operations, resilience management encompasses an integrated suite of management and technical approaches dealing with defending, adapting, or even abandoning critical infrastructure. These activities are seamlessly woven into an agency’s asset management practice. 10. Extreme weather resilience is not just the new, politically correct term for climate change. This assertion results from confusing cause-and-effect relationships. Global warming results from injecting industrial gases (primarily CO2 and methane) into the atmosphere (i.e., the greenhouse effect). One of the predicted effects of global warming is climate change, or long- term changes to weather patterns. Among these weather-related changes is an increase in the frequency and severity of extreme weather events. In other words, climate change is the cause and extreme weather is one of the effects. Mature resilience practices aim to reduce both cause and effect dimensions. A primary justification for taking a collaborative, cooperative approach to this project was to build a constituency for its findings. It was thought that this approach would, in turn, encourage multiple entities to adopt, adapt, and operationalize the recommendations contained in the roadmap. The roadmap can be used in several possible ways: 1. The recommended 2020–2025 slate of projects will give the readers core project material that can be used to prepare Research Problem Statement submissions to the annual NCHRP process. 2. Readers interested in gaining a deeper understanding of topics of interest to FHWA, TRB, or the state DOTs from a market analysis perspective may want to concentrate on the detailed analysis contained in the downloadable Roadmap Ratings and Rankings Workbook (Appendix C).

Conclusions and Recommendations 21   These ideas could become themes for upcoming AASHTO, TRB, or FHWA meetings, sessions, panels, workshops, webinars, calls for papers, and other efforts. 3. Agency executives and high-level managers can use the material contained in the discussion papers for multiple purposes in their respective agencies, including raising awareness, risk and resilience self-assessments, developing educational material for partners such as elected officials, peer agencies, private-sector providers, and so forth. 4. Ultimately, the roadmap could provide the foundation for a living document, acting as an investment framework for a national research program in transportation resilience jointly defined by FHWA, AASHTO, and its member DOTs, maintained by a joint committee of stakeholders.