Speaker
Description
This research applies complex network theory to investigate the resilience of provincial road networks, focusing on Foggia Province in southern Italy. Foggia was selected due to its critical role in regional logistics and its vulnerability to disruptions caused by environmental hazards such as earthquakes. Road infrastructure resilience is essential for sustaining economic and social systems, as these networks support goods and passenger transit. Bridges are often critical points in road networks, and their failure can severely impact connectivity [1]. This research implements a large segmented road network to examine localized disruptions and their impact on connectivity, even in small-scale failures.
Resilience is the network’s ability to recover from localized disruptions while maintaining functionality. In this study, road segments are represented as edges, and their start and end points as nodes. To identify vulnerable bridges in the event of earthquakes, empirical fragility curves from the RISK-UE project were used [2]. These curves estimate damage probabilities based on material, span continuity, and seismic parameters. Road data were extracted from OpenStreetMap and preprocessed using the GeoPandas library, incorporating street hierarchies (highways, primary roads, local roads) and bridge data. The effects of failures were evaluated by monitoring changes in quantitative metrics like global efficiency and average shortest path length before and after edge removal.
This study highlights how localized disruptions, such as critical bridge failures, can have broader network-wide impacts. Preliminary results show that a few highways act as primary connectors in Foggia’s network, while local roads play a crucial role in maintaining regional connectivity under stress. The methodology identifies network vulnerabilities and offers guidance for targeted infrastructure investments to improve resilience. The framework can be universally applied to different network topologies. Future work will expand this approach to include road quality, maintenance, and traffic congestion.
[1] Moradi Amani, A., Jalili, M. (2021). Power Grids as Complex Networks: Resilience and Reliability Analysis. https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2021.3107492
[2] Mouroux, P., Bertrand, E., Bour, M., Le Brun, B., Depinois, S., Masure, P., and The RISK-UE Team. (2004). The European RISK-UE project: An advanced approach to earthquake risk scenarios. Proceedings of the 13th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering (13WCEE), Vancouver, BC, Canada, 1–6 August 2004; Curran Associates, Inc.: New York, NY, USA, p. 3329, ISBN 9789892031828.
