TOPOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF DISTANCE WEIGHTED NORTH AMERICAN RAILROAD NETWORK: EFFICIENCY, ECCENTRICITY, AND RELATED ATTRIBUTES

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dc.contributor.advisorAyyub, Bilal M.en_US
dc.contributor.authorElsibaie, Sheriefen_US
dc.contributor.departmentReliability Engineeringen_US
dc.contributor.publisherDigital Repository at the University of Marylanden_US
dc.contributor.publisherUniversity of Maryland (College Park, Md.)en_US
dc.date.accessioned2024-02-14T06:54:59Z
dc.date.available2024-02-14T06:54:59Z
dc.date.issued2023en_US
dc.description.abstractThe North American railroad system can be well represented by a network with 302,943 links (track segments) and 250,388 nodes (stations, junctions, and waypoints), and other points of interest based on publicly accessible geographical information obtained from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) and the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA). From this large network a slightly more consolidated subnetwork representing the major freight railroads and Amtrak was selected for analysis. Recent improvements in network and graph theory and improvements in all-pairs shortest path algorithms make it more feasible to process certain characteristics on large networks with reduced computation time and resources. The characteristics of networks at issue to support network-level risk and resilience studies include node efficiency, node eccentricity, and other attributes derived from those measures, such as network arithmetic efficiency, network geometric central node, radius, and diameter, and some distribution measures of the node characteristics. Rail distance weighting factors, representing the length of each rail line derived from BTS data, are mapped to corresponding links, and are used as link weights for the purpose of computing all pair shortest paths and subsequent characteristics. This study also compares the characteristics of North American railroad infrastructure subnetworks divided by Class I carriers, which are the largest railroad carriers classified by the Surface Transportation Board (STB) by annual operating revenue, and which together comprise most of the North American railroad network. These network characteristics can be used to inform placement of resources and plan for natural hazard and disaster scenarios. They relate to many practical applications such as network efficiency to distribute traffic and a network’s ability to recover from disruptions. The primary contribution of this thesis is the novel characterization of a detailed network representation of the North American railroad network and Class I carrier subnetworks, with established as well novel network characteristics.en_US
dc.identifierhttps://doi.org/10.13016/krtz-lxoc
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/31784
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.subject.pqcontrolledCivil engineeringen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledEccentricityen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledEfficiencyen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledGraph Theoryen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledNetwork Analysisen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledRailroadsen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledTransportationen_US
dc.titleTOPOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF DISTANCE WEIGHTED NORTH AMERICAN RAILROAD NETWORK: EFFICIENCY, ECCENTRICITY, AND RELATED ATTRIBUTESen_US
dc.typeThesisen_US

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