An Open Transportation Network Resilience Analytics Platform for Large-Scale Urban Accessibility Analysis

Cities around the globe are using trip planning platforms to develop more resilient transportation networks. However, these platforms are often constrained by the missing capability of multi-modal planning, the lack of high-quality open data, and the high cost of premium APIs. They are also often not ready for large-scale calculations and analyses due to the constraints of the computing resources or the rate limits placed by commercial APIs. In this paper, we present an open platform called "transportation network resilience analytics (TNRA)" platform. Building on the mature and acclaimed OpenTripPlanner routing engine, the platform automates the process of obtaining and importing OpenStreetMap (OSM) and general transit feed specification (GTFS) data for multi-modal trip planning. TNRA also includes multiprocessing and cluster computing capabilities to enable parallel computing for large-scale calculations and analyses across multiple machines. To validate the platform, we compared the calculations between TNRA and Google Maps. We also conducted a case study in Boston to demonstrate the potential usage of the platform. The TNRA platform calculated the normative accessibility of neighborhoods in Boston's evacuation zones to the designated shelters during a simulated strike of a hurricane. The comparison and case study confirm the validity of the platform and demonstrate its potential applications.