Road infrastructure plays an important role in the economic and social development of societies. Thus, it requires effective and timely responses to cope with and embrace uncertain future changes. This study proposes an integrated, scenario-based strategic model which estimates transport demand, network performance, emission, and energy consumption. The model accounts for future economic, behavioral, policy, and technological developments by including four future scenarios and traces the possible changes in transport infrastructure performance. It primarily aims at supporting infrastructure decisions by quantifying a set of network and environmental performance indicators along their spatial–temporal dimension. Moreover, the effects of transport demand and energy transition policies on road performance are considered within each scenario. This model is applied in a case study region covering the main industrial and urban regions of the Netherlands. The discussed results provide insights into the possible infrastructure investments within each scenario and elaborate on the possible effects of policies.
A vast amount of investment in infrastructure is required to respond to short-and long-term social, technological, and environmental needs and developments. Because infrastructure systems are highly interconnected, much can be gained by considering these interdependencies when planning future investments. However, identifying opportunities that arise from these infrastructure interdependencies has mainly been neglected. So far, the risk perspective has dominated interdependency studies. Alternatively, this paper proposes an agentbased modeling approach supporting infrastructure decision makers (1) to reveal the effects of planned sector-specific investments on the performance of interdependent infrastructures; and (2) to identify situations around which cross-sectoral coordination and collaboration can be shaped. The selected modeling approach treats infrastructure as sociotechnical systems, incorporating sector-driven operational decisions and infrastructure demand changes. They included operational decisions that respond to temporary or longer-term demand-capacity mismatch to account for the flexibility in exploiting available systemwide capacities. This modeling approach results in a more realistic estimation of infrastructure performance and beneficial co-investment opportunities. A regional transportation infrastructure system in the Netherlands is used as a case to demonstrate the approach.
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