Can Transport System Resilience and Sustainability Be Economically Efficient?
Climate change is already causing a number of demonstrable effects on transport and logistics systems, especially in vulnerable coastal and urban areas. These effects are expected to worsen and many are speaking of the need for transport and logistics systems (and human/infrastructure systems more generally) to be designed to be more 'resilient' and ‘sustainable.’ This article considers the various definitions of the terms “resilient” and “sustainable” and “economic efficiency” and then details some preliminary answers to the following questions: (1) what factors build up resilience and what are the 'efficiency' implications of those factors? (2) what sorts of actions increase resiliency and what are their 'efficiency' implications? (3) how 'efficient' is the status quo ex ante to begin with? (4) is the 'efficiency' baseline itself sensible? The article then concludes that some resilience and sustainability adaptations may in fact increase economic efficiency if done well. However, there certainly will be trade-offs needed given the changes that are being seen and some material sacrifice for ‘mere’ survival will surely be needed.
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Supplemental Notes:
- This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ADD40 Standing Committee on Transportation and Sustainability.
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Corporate Authors:
500 Fifth Street, NW
Washington, DC United States 20001 -
Authors:
- Gordon, Cameron
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Conference:
- Transportation Research Board 95th Annual Meeting
- Location: Washington DC, United States
- Date: 2016-1-10 to 2016-1-14
- Date: 2016
Language
- English
Media Info
- Media Type: Digital/other
- Features: Figures; References;
- Pagination: 12p
- Monograph Title: TRB 95th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers
Subject/Index Terms
- TRT Terms: Climate change; Coasts; Economic efficiency; Sustainable transportation; Urban areas
- Uncontrolled Terms: Resilience (Adaptability)
- Subject Areas: Economics; Environment; Policy; Transportation (General);
Filing Info
- Accession Number: 01592705
- Record Type: Publication
- Report/Paper Numbers: 16-1319
- Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
- Created Date: Mar 4 2016 5:04PM