I-70 Risk and Resilience Pilot Project
The Takeaways
After the 2013 floods, the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) sought to identify design alternatives that would increase the resilience of the affected sites.
Highway risk and resilience analyses are built on data and expertise, and are part of Colorado’s larger Resiliency Framework.
By engaging a wide range of engineering, maintenance, operational, planning, and executive staff, the project is benefiting from the collaboration and shared knowledge across multiple areas of expertise.
The Case Study
Following the 2013 floods, one of many disruptions that Colorado has experienced, the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) sought to identify design alternatives that would increase the resilience of the affected sites. In particular, they sought to address their vulnerabilities to future shock events through comprehensive analysis and integrated design approaches, which help mitigate and minimize future losses. Traversing the Rocky Mountains and serving as the primary east-west corridor, I-70 is a vital corridor in the Colorado transportation system, that enables commercial and personal travel central to Colorado’s economy and transportation network. Due to Colorado’s unique topography, there is little redundancy for I-70 in many locations.
The project began in August 2016, this year-long project will assess hazards along the entire I-70 corridor from border to border to identify areas with a high probability of losses from a range of threats, both natural (e.g., flooding) and direct (e.g., bridge strikes); the anticipated damages from these potential threats; and the corridor’s ability to adapt to these threats. The I-70 Risk and Resilience Pilot was completed in Fall 2017. It has helped provide CDOT with risk and resilience information for assets along I-70 and to prioritize work at key locations where risk is high, and resiliency is currently low. Results have already provided three key pieces of information important to CDOT for decision-making:
1. Criticality rating reflecting each asset’s impacts on overall system performance.
2. The annualized monetary risk from potential threats for each analyzed asset.
3. The measure of the resilience of each analyzed asset reflecting the impact to the traveling public from potential threats.
Want more information?
Read the full I-70 Corridor Risk & Resilience Pilot report.