In order to prioritize the recovery following a disaster, criteria are needed to base the ordering on. In the past things such as population, road type and capacity, average daily traffic, and so on have been used. This project uses critical facilities as the primary criteria in determining the order of the recovery. Critical facilities are defined as any facility necessary for the community’s well being. They include emergency facilities such as hospitals and fire stations, centers of commerce, schools, and many, many others. Facilities will be categorized using hierarchical holographic modeling. One of the major objectives of this project is to include as many critical facilities as possible, especially ones that are not all that obvious.
Another objective of this project is to create the priority setting tool in a digital format and make it available on-line for VDOT to use. Arcview GIS and Microsoft Excel are used to make this program as comprehensive and easy to use as possible. Data including population, highway mileage, and critical facilities are derived from the Arcview database, and Excel is used to analyze the results. The tool will require user input including highway damage and severity of the disaster, and the output can be customized to look at short, medium, or long term recovery.
This section examines, by example, the scheduling of the recovery project to demonstrate what activities most influence the timing of the post-disaster process. By identifying flows of tasks using networking techniques, a critical path of events is identified, which helps to determine where problem areas and bottlenecks in scheduling could occur. By collecting additional data and employing this methodology, improvements in efficiency and speed of post-event process can be achieved.
This section includes an investigation of past intra and inter-agency delays arising in the pre and post-disaster processes.
This chapter identifies opportunities to improve the allocation of resources for preparedness and recovery. New technology is introduced in the form of a multi-objective chart to offer support for resource allocation.
This section extends the research done in a previous effort to other aspects of highway infrastructure. Work done to improve the recovery of highway signs, signals, and lights has been extended to improve the recovery of bridges, tunnels, smart highway systems, etc.
The effort will develop, document, and classify printed and electronic resources, databases, and software that support the methodology developed in the above tasks and provide a foundation for continuous planning by the agency.
The effort will develop progress and final reports, slide presentations, and a workshop to train VDOT districts and residencies in the developed methodology. Reports, presentations, and software will conform to the publications requirements of the Virginia Department of Transportation Research Council. Documentation and spreadsheets will also be provided in electronic form and, in coordination with the proper information-systems committees of VDOT (e.g. the TIMSC), via a prototype internet web site at the University of Virginia.