91ÃÛÌÒ¸ó

Background

Flooding is the world's most common natural disaster, causing widespread economic losses and human hardship—impacts that will grow with climate change. Engineering solutions have been developed to protect roadways against flooding, but they have mainly focused on physical infrastructure, neglecting the impacts on communities and individuals.

91ÃÛÌÒ¸ó Objective

The overall objective of this project is better understand the behavioral, psychological, and social consequences of damaged transportation infrastructure. The IRI research group analyzed the impacts of flooding events in transportation and community mobility.Ìý

91ÃÛÌÒ¸ó Methods

This research analyzed transportation mobility data collected from anonymized smartphones and other devices to measure the short, mid, and long-term effects of flooding in mobility.

Contributions

This study resulted in the following contributions:Ìý

• A data-driven methodology to quantify traffic resilience of communities using crowdsourced data.
• A methodology to evaluate the relationship between disaster outcomes and the community vulnerability or resilience. This methodology was applied to understand the relationship of vulnerability and resilience indices used in the United States with mobility impacts.

Results from this work have been published and presented in different venues:

• Contreras, F.; Torres-Machi, C.Ìý(2026)ÌýImpact of Climate Change on Transportation: Opportunities to Leverage Crowdsourced Data to Understand Impacts on Traffic. Book chapter in Climate Change Impacts in Texas: Integrated Analysis and Adaptation.Ìý
• Contreras, F.; Torres-Machi, C. (2025) Data-driven methodology to quantify traffic resilience of communities from crowdsourced location data. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 118, 105219. DOI: 10.1016/j.ijdrr.2025.105219
• Contreras, F.; Torres-Machi, C. (2024) Impacts of Flooding on Traffic Functionality from Crowdsourced Location Data. ASCE International Conference on Computing in Civil Engineering (ASCEÌýi3ce),ÌýCorvallis, Oregon, USA, June 25-28, 2023, pp. 118-126. Organized by: American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). DOI: 10.1061/9780784485248.015.

Funding

National Science Foundation (NSF): Strengthening American Infrastructure (SAI) : 2021-2024.