Resumen
Adverse weather poses a significant threat to the serviceability of highway infrastructure, as it causes more frequent and severe crash incidents. This study focuses on evaluating the resilience of highway networks by examining the crash-induced safety impact in response to extreme weather events. Unlike traditional service drop-based methods for resilience evaluation, this study endeavors to evaluate highway resilience in a spatial context. Three spatial metrics, including K-nearest neighbors, proximity to highways, and Kernel density hot spot, are introduced and employed to compare and analyze the spatial patterns (magnitude and distribution) of crashes in pre- and post-weather conditions. An illustrative example is also provided to showcase the applications of the proposed spatial resilience metrics for two study areas in the State of Illinois, U.S. The contribution of this study is to provide transportation practitioners with a tool to evaluate highway spatial resilience both visually and quantitatively, and ultimately improve highway safety and operation.