Assessing movement-specific resilience of a signalized road network under lane-level cascading failure

Abstract

Accurately assessing the resilience of the road network is crucial for responding to emergencies and enhancing public safety. Signal control plays a significant role in managing traffic flow. However, its impact is often overlooked in resilience assessments, where traffic flow and signal control are usually considered separately. A Movement-Specific Resilience (MSR) assessment model is proposed to integrate signal timing into resilience analysis. To accurately represent traffic flow paths under phase control, a dual graph is used to depict the topological network, allowing the assessment of relationships among all movements at an intersection. Based on this, a cascading failure model is developed to analyze the impact of signal control on traffic flow reassignment, reflecting how signal timing influences traffic flow propagation after failures. The method is validated using data collected from a sub-road network in Xi’an city. Results reveal the cumulative resilience of single lanes is not equivalent to the resilience of road segments. The MSR is higher when the network’s failure degree is low and decreases as the failure level increases. Furthermore, road saturation is inversely related to MSR, while MSR is proportional to capacity. MSR remains unaffected by failures and oversaturation when capacity exceeds a certain threshold. These insights could be a theoretical foundation for bolstering resilience via signal control adjustments.