Geohazard vulnerability and condition assessment of the Asian highway AH-48 in Bhutan

Abstract

Transport networks are frequently exposed to geohazards, and losses can be observed frequently by notable disaster incidents such as landslides, earthquakes, and floods. Although losses due to natural disasters are frequently reported, limited attention is paid to assess the condition of strategic road networks in the Himalayas. Thus, to fulfill this gap, this study performs condition assessment of Asian Highway AH-48 in Bhutan and develops a system to rate the performance level of road assets. The assessment is conducted along a 157.6 km stretch of AH-48. The sum of findings highlights that about 55% of the road assets along the AH-48 are highly vulnerable to geohazards. Drains are observed to be the most vulnerable, with 52% drains lying below the standard rating among the considered assets followed by retaining walls and pavement. Landslide vulnerability function for highways that are situated in mountain regions is developed using the newly proposed landslide intensity scale. The sum of findings highlights that the Himalayan roads will be affected mostly by landslides and the drainage system is the most affected road asset showing the least serviceability among the common road assets.

Publication DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/19475705.2021.1980440
Divisions: College of Business and Social Sciences > Aston Business School
College of Business and Social Sciences
College of Business and Social Sciences > School of Social Sciences & Humanities > Centre for Health and Society
Funding Information: Some of the information presented in this paper were collected under the project “Geo-hazard Risk Management and Asset Management in Bhutan—Data Entry and Data Collection” funded by the World Bank as a part of technical assistance (TA) to DOR executed by
Additional Information: Funding Information: Some of the information presented in this paper were collected under the project “Geo-hazard Risk Management and Asset Management in Bhutan—Data Entry and Data Collection” funded by the World Bank as a part of technical assistance (TA) to DOR executed by Civil Engineering and Architecture Department, College of Science and Technology, Royal University of Bhutan with contract no. 7183993. Authors are thankful to World Bank and DOR team members. Publisher Copyright: © 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Uncontrolled Keywords: condition assessment,geohazard,landslide vulnerability,Road asset,General Environmental Science,General Earth and Planetary Sciences
Publication ISSN: 1947-5713
Last Modified: 02 Dec 2024 08:45
Date Deposited: 25 Nov 2022 16:27
Full Text Link:
Related URLs: http://www.scop ... tnerID=8YFLogxK (Scopus URL)
https://www.tan ... 05.2021.1980440 (Publisher URL)
PURE Output Type: Article
Published Date: 2021-09-29
Published Online Date: 2021-09-29
Accepted Date: 2021-09-10
Authors: Tempa, Karma
Chettri, Nimesh
Aryal, Komal Raj (ORCID Profile 0000-0001-9980-4516)
Gautam, Dipendra

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