The Impacts of Increased Adverse Weather Events on Freight Movement

Freight transportation is a major economic backbone of the United States and is vital to sustaining the nation’s economic growth. Ports, as one of the primary components of freight transportation and important means of integrating into the global economic system, have experienced significant growth and increased capacity during the past two decades. The study addresses an important national freight mobility goal to enhance the resilience of the port transportation operations in the event of extreme weather events. This study develops an adaptable resilience assessment framework that evaluates the impact of a disruptive event on transportation operations. The framework identifies dynamic performance levels over an extended period of an event including five distinct phases of responses- staging, reduction, peak, restoration, and overloading. This study applies the framework to the port complex in Houston, Texas, during a major hurricane event, Harvey, and two holiday events in 2017. The framework evaluates proactive and reactive responses of port truck activities during the disruptions and provides a comprehensive assessment of resilience and adaptability in port truck operations. Evaluating response systems and resilience of port truck activities during severe weather events such as Hurricane Harvey represents the first step for designing plans that support a fast system recovery that minimizes the economic, social, and human impacts.