Briefing: Rethinking urban infrastructure from an ecological perspective in a post Covid-19 world

Road infrastructure is necessary for any country to function and upon which daily life depends. Novel sources of vulnerability, such as climate change or increased interdependencies amongst networks due to technological advancements, can lead to road disruptions. Those disruptions may have catastrophic results if there are no alternative routes to serve traffic. State of the art research in improving transport network connectivity and consequently resilience focuses on adopting a network perspective. However, there is no comprehensive, widespread method for evaluating connectivity and proposing alternative routes to enhance it. Presented herein is a framework that firstly assesses road network connectivity using a “closeness” measure and secondly proposes the development of optimal alternative routes, using a genetic algorithm. The case study examines routes passing by the vulnerable asset of bridges. The results showed a significant improvement of network connectivity and the potential of the method to serve as the basis for updated transport infrastructure planning practices.