Equitable Transport Resilience to Urban Flooding

Introduction:
Flooding increasingly disrupts everyday mobility in coastal cities, yet transport restoration is often assessed only in technical terms. Experience from recurrent flood events in Chennai shows that reopening roads and transit routes does not ensure equitable access. Low-income households, informal workers, women, the elderly, and persons with disabilities often face longer disruptions and higher recovery burdens. While most studies emphasise response and recovery, resilience is also shaped by mitigation and preparedness measures such as risk reduction planning, evacuation training, and institutional readiness. This study examines whether post-flood transport recovery is not only resilient but also equitable within the broader risk management cycle.

Methods:
The study develops an equity-centred framework integrating four resilience dimensions (robustness, redundancy, rapidity, and resourcefulness) with three justice dimensions (distributional, procedural, and recognition), across mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery phases. A mixed-methods approach combines field observations, commuter and household surveys, mapping of informal mobility systems, stakeholder consultations, and spatial analysis. Indicators are standardised to generate a Resilience Index (RI), a Justice Index (JI), and an integrated Equity–Resilience Integration Index (ERII). Ward-level analysis identifies mismatches between system performance, preparedness capacity, and lived mobility experiences.

Results:
Findings reveal uneven recovery patterns. In several areas, infrastructure functionality returned quickly, yet vulnerable groups continued to face access barriers. Locations with weak preparedness—such as limited evacuation planning, low awareness, and poor institutional coordination—experienced prolonged disruptions. Informal and community-led mobility systems played a critical role in maintaining connectivity but remain under-recognised in formal planning.

Conclusions:
Evaluating resilience through a justice lens across the full risk management cycle exposes gaps overlooked by conventional metrics. The ERII framework provides a practical tool for integrating mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery, supporting more inclusive and equitable transport recovery in flood-prone coastal cities.