Title: An investigation of the effects of critical infrastructure on urban mobility in the city of Medellín

Authors: Miguel Jaller; Carlos A. González-Calderón; Wilfredo F. Yushimito; Iván D. Sánchez-Díaz

Addresses: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California, 2001 Ghausi Hall, 3143, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA, 95616, USA ' Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Center for Infrastructure, Transportation, and the Environment (CITE), VREF's Center of Excellence on Sustainable Urban Freight Systems (COE-SUFS), Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 110 Eighth Street, Troy, NY, 12180, USA ' Department of Engineering and Sciences, Adolfo Ibáñez University, Viña del Mar, Chile ' Department of Technology Management and Economics, Chalmers University of Technology, Maskingränd 2, Gothenburg, 412 96, Sweden

Abstract: Critical infrastructure refers to the type of facilities, services, and installations (e.g., transportation, communication, energy systems) that are essential for the functioning of a community, city or country. This paper describes the findings of the research conducted to identify the transportation network critical facilities (road links) and their impacts on urban mobility for the city of Medellin, the second largest city in Colombia. This paper analyses the negative effects on travel time when a facility is disrupted or the capacity is suddenly reduced (e.g., accident, natural or manmade disaster, dedicated bike-route, maintenance, and construction). Criticality is identified following two methodologies: 1) comparing the travel time of the network users solving the user equilibrium (UE) traffic assignment problem between the base case and the disrupted network; 2) assessing the impact of the disrupted facility on the path travel times between affected origin-destinations zones.

Keywords: critical infrastructures; urban mobility; traffic assignment; user equilibrium; heuristics; shortest path; Medellín; Colombia; transport networks; critical facilities; road links; cities; capacity reduction; capacity disruption; travel time.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCIS.2015.072158

International Journal of Critical Infrastructures, 2015 Vol.11 No.3, pp.213 - 232

Received: 14 Aug 2013
Accepted: 10 May 2014
Published online: 02 Oct 2015 *

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