In the Netherlands there is a complex road network of about 140.000 kilometers, of which 5.500 kilometers are national roads. These national roads are very busy, so, it’s understandable that when something disrupts the traffic flow this can have a big impact. The size and consequences of the impact of a disruption is indicated by the resilience. Resilience of a transportation system indicates how well the system can withstand and recover from disruptions. A resilient transport system is able to withstand disruptions, and able to recover from them quickly.
Recent research has shown that resilience of road networks is strongly dependent on certain parameters of the network. The relation of resilience with network parameters, such as density, number of nodes and average number of lanes was investigated, and the research showed that networks with a lower density having a higher resilience. It was also found that no conclusion could be drawn about the relation between capacity and resilience. For this research random networks were drawn. However, the networks generated had very correlated parameters. This made it difficult to find which network parameters influenced the resilience the most. It is possible to design networks differently, such that the network parameters can be better distinguished. Also, the relation between network size and resilience is still an open research topic. Check this document for further details.