The research and the practice associated with the development of resilient transportation systems have, to date, focused largely on the characterization and reduction of the vulnerability of transportation systems and the impacts of disruptive events on system users. Emerging evidence, however, suggests that a move from a technical focus to a sociotechnical focus has the potential to enhance the resilience of built systems and the societies that they serve. This paper first reviews the literature on the resilience of the transportation system to characterize the nature of approaches to the development of resilience in the transportation system. The paper offers examples of cases that provide evidence of the added benefits associated with a move from a largely technical approach to a sociotechnical approach. Subsequently, the paper reviews the literature on resilience in social, ecological, and economic systems to identify opportunities for expanding the scope of existing approaches to develop resilience in the transportation system and offer operational pathways forward. The review findings indicate that the following concepts may be applied to enhance the development of resilience in the transportation system: adaptive behavior and multiple equilibrium states from resilience in ecological systems; vulnerability, adaptive capacity, and participative capacity from resilience in social systems; a multiscale approach to resilience; and static and dynamic resilience in economic systems. Overall systematic efforts toward the development of institutional, organizational, social, and financial capital with influences on the resilience of the transportation system would also enhance the development of resilience in the transportation system.

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This paper discusses the Georgia Department of Transportation’s (GDOT’s) performance-based and evidence-based approach to research implementation. Transportation agencies in the United States spend hundreds of millions of dollars on research, development, and technology transfer annually. From a performance-based standpoint, agencies will realize higher returns on investment and higher impacts of their research programs as research is implemented more effectively and efficiently. From an evidence-based standpoint, requesting evidence of research implementation as implementation deliverables from the outset of the project requires the project research team and other staff to think through and incorporate in the project plan explicit ways in which the research will be implemented. GDOT’s performance-based approach to research program management treats research implementation as part of an overall asset management business process. This process integrates technical, human, organizational, and external resources to encourage, track, and monitor research implementation activities toward achieving agency strategic objectives, using an evidence-based approach. The paper discusses the adoption of a performance-based and evidence-based process, and a research implementation management tool, and their application in the development of the fiscal year 2018 Annual Research Implementation Report as well as its impact within and beyond the agency. This paper is potentially useful to transportation practitioners and agencies that want to adopt a performance-based and evidence-based approach to augment return on research investment.

Different concepts of health have been applied to transportation and other built infrastructure systems in the literature and in practice. The 2012 national surface transportation legislation, Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century, established a performance-based planning framework requiring the development of performance measures and targets with progress reporting by state, metropolitan, and local agencies toward achieving seven national goals. Although performance-based planning offers a formal platform on which to plan systematically to achieve goals, one of the key challenges is how best to manage transportation system performance in nonuniform metropolitan regions and local jurisdictions to achieve uniform statewide and national goals. Motivated by this issue, this study developed the concept of transportation system health (TSH) with a focus on fulfilling both basic needs and beyond-basic needs of the communities that transportation systems serve, with Maslow’s theory of human motivation as a foundation. Potential applications of the TSH framework are discussed, with examples highlighting their significance for multiscale and context-sensitive planning and decision making. This paper is potentially useful to practitioners looking for systematic approaches to support identifying strategic goals, determining priorities, selecting performance measures, and setting targets in nonuniform regions to achieve uniform statewide goals.

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