Resilience-oriented Strategies for Planning and Design of Road Infrastructures in Considering Cascading Effects on Emergency Medical Service

Road Infrastructures (RIs) support a wide variety of activities ranging in modern societies and play a critical role in economic competitiveness and quality of life. However, RIs are vulnerable to congestion, accidents, weather conditions, special events, and natural disasters. Therefore, the concept of “resilience”, which means the ability of a system exposed to hazards to absorb change and disturbance, and maintain and improve its state, gain more and more popularity in the field of RIs management. Moreover, many studies investigate the issue of cascading effects of infrastructure disruption, which could cause functional disruptions to other urban components.

The relationship between RIs and the Emergency Medical Services (EMSs) is evident; even though modern emergency medical transports can partly rely on helicopters, their operation and implementation are still largely dependent on RIs. The disruption of road transport is highly probable to delay ambulances and prevent patients from receiving timely treatment. Thus, a resilience-oriented strategy for RIs should not only make the road infrastructure able to respond to hazards but should also avoid the cascading effects of RIs dysfunction on medical services.

A resilient infrastructure should have different aspects of capabilities and involve actions to improve its capabilities. The management strategies for RIs, facing potential risks, require preparedness for both immediate and medium-long-term actions. This study, taking Nantes city with possible flood hazards as an example, firstly aims at assessing the impacts of RIs interruption on Nantes EMS facing different levels of flooding (low, medium, strong, and very strong). The studied impacts focus on the delay of ambulances and the reduction of the survival rate of patients with heart attacks.

Furthermore, this study, presents a resilience-oriented strategy for Nantes RIs management, including potential actions such as installations of temporary dykes or footbridges, the elevation of RIs, the use of sustainable materials, planting soil, and structural growing medium for green space and permeable pavement to implement groundwater drainage.