A comprehensive approach to assess transportation system resilience towards disruptive events. Case study on airside airport systems

Transportation system resilience towards events that disrupt system scheduling and nominal functioning is a key challenge for both planners and transport operators. The development of effective policies to enhance resilience requires the analysis of the relationships between the type of disruptive event, the characteristics of the transport system under analysis and its response. This paper aims to contribute to this topic by providing some vulnerability and resilience indices for a complex transport node (airport) within a comprehensive framework based on an element-by-element approach able to identify both disturbances for which transportation systems are more vulnerable (or more resilient) and responses in terms of vulnerability and resilience. Infrastructural, organizational and technological transportation system elements that are more likely affected by given disruptions are the starting point for clustering possible disruptive events. The approach has been tested by simulating four European airports, for which the effects of different types of disruption have been discussed. The obtained results show that the responses of transport system elements to the same type of disruptive events may be different, according to several factors depending on both system features and use of resources. Furthermore, the duration of the disturbance may be relevant for the system vulnerability, while resilience and vulnerability do not necessarily vary in the same way.