TRIP$ - Transportation Risk-Recovery Investment Planning Solutions: Optimizing Earthquake Resilience & Functional Recovery of Highways

Published

September 29, 2025

Author(s)

Aspasia Nikolaou, Angelos Tsatsis, Maria Antoniou, Juan Fung, Yalda Saadat, Fani Gelogoti, Rallis Kourkoulis, Steven McCabe

Abstract

The United States (US) faces significant challenges in maintaining and modernizing its aging infrastructure, particularly in the transportation sector, which includes roadways, bridges, rail, air, ports, and pipelines. Infrastructure vulnerabilities continue to be exacerbated by maintenance backlogs, inefficient resource allocation, and increasing risks from natural hazards and extreme weather events. In response, recent initiatives have sought to enhance infrastructure resilience, including the Functional Recovery framework, developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which establishes recovery-based objectives to improve post-disaster performance of lifeline infrastructure systems. Building on this evolving landscape, this report introduces a first-generation decision-support framework, TRIP$ (Transportation Risk/Recovery Investment Planning Solutions). TRIP$ integrates developments for highway infrastructure resilience with advanced methodologies for risk assessment and resilience-based investment planning. Initially focused on earthquake resilience of highway infrastructure, the modular framework can incorporate multiple hazards, such as flood, and be adapted to other lifeline systems. An end-to-end technical implementation focused on the seismic resilience of US highway bridge portfolios illustrates the framework's scope, functionality, and potential applications. The report concludes with a discussion of limitations, ongoing research, and future development directions

Citation

Special Publication (NIST SP) - 1340

Report Number

1340

NIST Pub Series

Special Publication (NIST SP)

Pub Type

NIST Pubs

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.6028/NIST.SP.1340

Local Download

Keywords

Bridges, Decision Support, Recovery, Risk, Earthquake Engineering, Functional Recovery, Infrastructure, Investments, Lifeline, Resilience, Efficiency, TRIP$, Transportation System

Citation

Nikolaou, A. , Tsatsis, A. , Antoniou, M. , Fung, J. , Saadat, Y. , Gelogoti, F. , Kourkoulis, R. and McCabe, S. (2025), TRIP$ - Transportation Risk-Recovery Investment Planning Solutions: Optimizing Earthquake Resilience & Functional Recovery of Highways, Special Publication (NIST SP), National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD, [online], https://doi.org/10.6028/NIST.SP.1340, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=959837 (Accessed October 9, 2025)