Investigating the elasticity of urban rail transit network after disturbance

In order to improve the elasticity of urban rail transit (URT) network, considering action and recovery process of disruption events, a risk assessment method for URT network based on robustness, vulnerability and elasticity is proposed. By quantifying the overall impact of disturbance on the performance of the URT network, a recovery model is established to maximize the elasticity index of the URT network and an adaptive genetic algorithm is used to solve it. Taking Xi'an URT network as an example, two disturbance scenarios are examined: a random attack and a deliberate attack. The recovery effect of the target recovery strategy, the random recovery strategy and the preferred recovery strategy on the elasticity of the URT network after the disturbance occurs is comparatively analyzed. The results show that the recovery effect of the targeted recovery strategy on the elasticity of the URT network is the best, followed by the preferred recovery strategy. The conclusions of this paper can provide strategic support for the recovery of the URT network after disturbance.