Abstract
With a focus on area wide, simultaneous failures of metropolitan transportation network systems as caused by the Great Hanshin Awaji Earthquake, this study proposes performance indices of highway network systems against such disaster risks. It is shown that the topological index developed by Hosoya for the analysis of topological properties of polymers and its variants serve as appropriate indicators for evaluating the overall performance of metropolitan highway networks against near-field earthquake disaster risks. Especially the proposed indicators are proved to measure effectively the disparity/concentration of highway networks as well as their redundancy properties. This paper concludes by assessing the potential and limit of this proposed indicator for evaluating real-world lifeline systems.
