A Strategic Plan for Transportation Resilience-PPT Presentation

PPT Presentation

Pdf Summary

The presentation outlines the Federal Highway Administration’s (FHWA) strategy for strengthening transportation resilience through geotechnical engineering. FHWA’s geotechnical program develops design and construction guidance, provides tools for transportation agencies, and promotes innovations that improve cost-effectiveness and reliability.<br /><br />A central priority is Geotechnical Asset Management (GAM): managing geotechnical features as connected parts of transportation corridors, where one poorly performing asset can disrupt the entire system. The program aims to establish performance expectations, improve decision-making, and develop deformation- and property-based metrics for buried assets.<br /><br />Resilience means anticipating, preparing for, adapting to, withstanding, responding to, and recovering from disruptions. Geohazards—including landslides, rockfall, scour, erosion, subsidence, and permafrost thaw—can threaten transportation infrastructure, while climate change may intensify these risks. FHWA policy and federal regulations increasingly require climate-risk and resilience considerations in transportation planning, asset management, and project funding.<br /><br />FHWA’s approach emphasizes data collection and analysis to identify hazard triggers, external events, maintenance needs, service interruptions, and asset vulnerabilities. It also seeks to define acceptable performance loss, service-life expectations, post-event performance, deterioration patterns, and the time and resources needed to restore service. Assessing performance is difficult because it depends on design, construction quality, environmental conditions, and maintenance and rehabilitation decisions.<br /><br />The research plan focuses on three areas: geotechnical input to system-wide decisions, project-specific design for future conditions, and resilient maintenance, repair, and replacement strategies. Cross-disciplinary collaboration and improved understanding of risk are essential to protecting transportation assets and reducing disruptions.

Keywords

FHWA

geotechnical engineering

transportation resilience

Geotechnical Asset Management

geohazards

climate risk

asset management

infrastructure vulnerability

transportation corridors

resilient maintenance