(logo whooshing)
- [Narrator] Extreme weather events
such as flooding, tornadoes, and hurricanes
are becoming more numerous in Texas.
Assessing the impact to the Texas Transportation Network
is vital to lessening the effects of such events
when they occur.
Working with the Texas A&M Transportation Institute,
the Texas Department of Transportation
has developed a scorecard and other tools
to effectively integrate infrastructure resiliency
into transportation planning.
- Our primary goal in this project
has been to help TxDOT
to then other transportation organizations
in the state like MPOs,
to operationalize resiliency practices
in planning and project development.
- Texas is an extremely large state
and experience different environmental impacts
depending on what location you are in the state of Texas.
So it was extremely important
to not simply develop a statewide strategy,
but to develop a tool and a mechanism that was customizable
for addressing the specific issues that occurred
within the region being looked at in the state of Texas.
We were looking for information to be developed
to inform us about future planning, investments,
and hardening of the transportation network.
- Impacts of extreme events such as hurricanes, flooding,
wildfires on infrastructure,
specifically transportation infrastructure is increasing
with the climate changes and it causes disruption
in these systems when these events happen,
and these disruptions can have catastrophic
economic and social effects.
We did a statewide Transportation Network Analysis
to rank the road networks and the road segments
in terms of their vulnerability
of criticality based on four different measures.
Measures related to exposure to flooding,
measure related to access to critical facilities,
measure related to physical proximity
to other infrastructure.
And of course the issues related to connectivity
of the entire road network to facilitate evacuation
and also response.
By accounting for the measures we created in this study
and using the outputs of our analysis
which is again implemented at the state road network
for the entire state.
So every district of TxDOT can know the level
of criticality of every single road segments
based on different measures,
so that then they can work to prioritize.
For example, whether to allocate resources
for rehabilitation of this road over here
or this road over here, they can prioritize and say, Hey
this road has more criticality, for example,
in terms of exposure to flooding.
Therefore, we need to retrofit
and maintain this road and prioritize it over this road.
They can incorporate revitalization.
- [Catherine] So behind the scenes within TxDOT,
the important thing is that we work together
with our stakeholders and our other partners
incorporating resiliency as one of the many aspects
of a project planning to ensure
that the transportation system remains intact
so that the traveling public
can get to where they need to when they want to.
- [Narrator] For more information
and to find the publication for this project,
please visit the TxDOT Research Library
at the link shown below.