n my column this month, I want to step back and reassure myself—and hopefully you along the way—that it’s okay to be slightly overwhelmed by the vastness of transportation resilience. What exactly does it mean to be resilient? Webster defines resilient (or resilience) as “an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change.” In the context of transportation, resilience is typically viewed as the ability of a transportation system to move people or goods in the face of one or more unexpected obstacles, failures, or extreme events.
We often hear about “the resilience of a network” after a major weather disaster, or in conjunction with concerns over climate impacts to our transportation functionalities. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports that last year alone (2023) there were 28 different billion-dollar disasters. That surpassed 2020, which had 22 events, for the highest number of billion-dollar disasters in the United States on record. It’s no wonder that we often equate resilience and weather when you have those kind of statistics.
But returning to my concerns about the vastness of definition, and being careful not to discount the importance of weather, aren’t there other factors beyond weather that we also need to prepare for? Sadly, there is an almost unlimited supply of things that can impact the resilience of our transportation infrastructure, and preparing for them can be all-consuming. That’s why it is helpful to continue to have conversations about resilience regardless of your particular role, position, or expertise within our industry.
John’s column is all about how you—the individual—can elevate preparedness because it will make a difference across so many different facets of your life (both personal and professional life). Let me take the next step and talk more about the “how.”
We begin by going into each project conversation with an open mind, willing to consider all the different factors. When the science of systems engineering first started gaining popularity in the 1950s and 1960s, there was an acceptance that considering many different disciplines and concerns during the planning and design stages would result in a longer product life cycle. If you consider that we often plan and design transportation infrastructure to have a life cycle of 50+ years, you immediately see why it’s very important to consider different viewpoints and factors during the planning and design process!
Our industry has successfully adapted over the past several decades to become more proficient at introducing different components during the early stages of projects. Safety, access, throughput, maintenance, and operations have all become mainstream in our planning and design phases in recent years, we’ve added other important needs such as environmental stewardship, equity/community needs, and importantly, resilience. We’re focusing on these opportunities while also facing some unprecedented challenges in funding, cybersecurity, and divisive politics. When you go back to the definition of resilience and see the word obstacles, those are some big ones.
But as I started out this column—it’s okay to be slightly overwhelmed. It means you’re paying attention, and you recognize this isn’t an overnight solution. I always say that the best way to approach a complex problem is to break it off into bite-sized chunks to chew on. You’ve taken the first step by picking up this issue and being willing to learn more about various resilience issues. As John often says: stay curious!