The impact of a PEER funded research project "Identification of Transportation Network Corridors, for Enhancing Network Resilience" is highlighted below. The project Principal Investigator (PI) is Jack W. Baker, Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Stanford University. The research team includes Rodrigo Silva Lopez, PhD Student, Stanford University.
Download the Research Project Highlight which includes the abstract. (PDF)
Research Impact:
We will evaluate the suitability of various network analysis algorithms for detecting corridors within the transportation network, and then evaluate whether retrofit strategies that consider these corridors are more effective in limiting seismic risk than alternatives. Figure 1 shows some preliminary results, performed using the Markov Clustering algorithm with road links weighed by their travel time and capacity. The approach is producing reasonably intuitive corridor results, but will be more valuable once we have evaluated the impact of considering larger versus smaller clusters of bridges, and once we have evaluated whether corridor-based retrofit strategies are in fact effective in reducing the probability of severe transportation disruptions after a large earthquake. The broader aim of this work is to develop new tools for identifying strategies to improve the performance of complex networks. While road networks are the specific focus of this project, the approach may be generalizable later to other critical infrastructure networks.
