Date of Award
5-2024
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Science (MS)
Department
Civil Engineering
Committee Chair/Advisor
Dr. Pamela Murray-Tuite
Committee Member
Dr. Abdul A. Khan
Committee Member
Dr. Shakhawat H. Tanim
Abstract
Transportation damage and disruptions will become increasingly common as the frequency of floods increases due to climate change. Given the size and cost of the transportation network construction, communities' mitigation measures should be supported by evaluations that cover both normal and disaster management phases. This thesis examines the criticality of road segments in the normal, flood response, and recovery phases, considering the effects on emergency services, healthcare, industry, education, recreation, and transit and analyses that whether a flood disrupts the operational trips of a company in Anderson County, South Carolina. A 100-year event and a 500-year flood event provides context for analyzing flood impacts to the time-based shortest paths, determined using ArcGIS Pro 3.1.3. Local and secondary roads were especially affected, with rerouting concentrating around the Anderson City area. Blocked road sections identified potentially vulnerable roads, and normalized betweenness centrality metrics identified community dependence on road segments for daily and emergency operations. While the quantity and dispersion of parks and grocery stores mitigated rerouting distance, other purposes faced challenges from impassable routes. Southeastern and southern regions as most impacted across purposes as per the analysis, suggesting targeted mitigation. The most critical routes before, during and after the flood were I-85, State Routes 28 and 81, and Federal Routes 29, 76, and 178. Also, the analysis for flood impacts on accessibility of a company in Anderson County was done using Boolean value assignment to the failed or non-failed links connecting the company with workforce, import and export trips. We found that the company undertaken for analysis would have disruption in importing and export of materials, but the workforce access was found to be not impacted as much. The routes that were found critically impacting the accessibility for the import and export were found to be SC 28 link, US 29 link, Highway 355 (New Pond Road link). This study highlights commonalities in road criticality across phases to support resilient transportation planning and sustainability. Based on both studies SC-28 link was found to be critical for flood disaster management phases, workforce accessibility, import and export and was found to be blocked due to 500-year flood.
Recommended Citation
Bhatta, Navin, "Dynamics of Link Importance Across Flood Disaster Phases And Flood Impacts on Operation of an Industry" (2024). All Theses. 4234.
https://open.clemson.edu/all_theses/4234
Author ORCID Identifier
0009-0006-5652-9677