Robustness Analysis of Urban Road Networks from Topological and Operational Perspectives

Abstract

This study comprehensively analyses the robustness of urban road networks through topological indices based on the complex network theory and operational indices based on traffic assignment theory: User Equilibrium (UE), System Optimum (SO), and Price of Anarchy (POA). Analysing topological indices may pin down the most important nodes for URNs from the perspective of connectivity, while more sophisticated operational indices are helpful to examine the importance of nodes for URNs by taking into account link capacity, travel demand, and drivers’ behaviour. The previous way is calculated in a static way, which reduces the computation times and increases the efficiency for quick assessment of the robustness of URNs, while the latter is in a dynamic way, namely, calculating is based on removal of individual nodes, although this way is more likely to capture realistic meanings but consumes huge amount of time. The efforts made in this study try to find the relationship between topological and operational indices so as to assist the assessment of robustness of URNs to local disruptions. Seven realistic urban road networks such as Sioux Falls and Anaheim are used as network examples, and results show that different indices reflect robustness characteristics of urban road networks from different ways, and rank correlations between any two indices are poor although small network such as Sioux Falls have better correlations than others.