Conference Papers 2024

Seminar
Day 3 (20 Sep 2024), Session 8, Transport market impact, 09:30 - 10:30

Status
Accepted, documents submitted

Submitted by / Abstract owner
Ingrid Johansson

Authors
Dr Ingrid Johansson, Division of Transport Planning, KTH Royal Institute of Technology (presenter)
Prof. Erik Jenelius, KTH Royal Institute of Technology
Dr Francisco J. Marquez Fernandez, VTI The Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute
Dr Jean Ryan, VTI The Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute

Short abstract
This paper presents a literature review of scientific publications on the topic of resilience of the transport system against antagonistic threats based on emerging technologies. The selected papers are discussed and publication trends are analysed.

Abstract
The operations and reliability of our transport systems are vulnerable not only to accidents but also to antagonistic threats. Attacks, sabotage and disruptions can come in different shapes but with new technologies constantly emerging, new security risks and vulnerabilities also appear. In the Swedish research project BULT, the aim is to create new knowledge about what contingency considerations in the transport system mean when considering new, emerging technologies, changed commodity supply chains and future threats, as well as investigating how contingency considerations can be integrated into the decision-making process of businesses and the government.
Technical development is expected to lead to higher complexity of both vehicles and infrastructure, including trends like digitalisation and connectivity (vehicle-vehicle, vehicle-infrastructure and vehicle-cloud), vehicle automatization, electrification, alternative fuels such as hydrogen, biofuels and electrofuels, and new types of vehicles such as drones (Trafikverket, 2022a). Concerning road transport, digitalisation is expected to affect road traffic control, new mobility solutions, data collection and analysis for planning, construction and maintenance, geofencing and advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) (Trafikverket, 2022b). Consequentially, common projections include that the transport system becomes more closely tied to the energy sector, especially electricity production and distribution, that the availability of specific raw materials such as lithium or cobalt for batteries and rare-earth elements for electrical motors is crucial, and that there is an increased risk for cyber-attacks on technology in vehicles and infrastructure. There are both possibilities and risks with digitalisation. Thus, there is a need to strengthen security, robustness, and crisis preparedness to balance risks and rewards.
Another concern is that the need for maintenance increases (Trafikverket, 2020; Trafikverket, 2021), especially when new and more technically complex systems are introduced, but also to mitigate the decline in the condition of the existing roads and railways.
Considering the aforementioned challenges related to the current and expected technical development in the transport sector, there is a need to understand how risks and contingency to antagonistic threats have been considered in research. In this paper, we present a literature review covering existing publications on risks and contingency for antagonistic threats to the transport system, particularly looking for papers with a forward look.
Initial literature searches yielded just a few papers or several thousand. The final search was performed on 4 January 2024 in the Scopus database using the search string
( TITLE ( *security OR threat* OR *attack* OR antagonist* OR sabotage* OR terroris* OR malicious OR piracy ) AND TITLE ( transport* OR road* OR rail* OR aviation OR maritime OR vehicle* ) AND TITLE ( preparedness OR readiness OR resilien* OR protect* OR defend* OR defence ) ) AND ( LIMIT-TO ( LANGUAGE , "English" ) ) resulting in 317 publications.
For the resulting publications, their title, abstract, and keywords were reviewed to sort out the relevant ones. Papers with a too-narrow technical focus that did not consider the implications for the transport sector were removed, as well as papers that concerned only non-technical issues and/or lacked a forward-looking perspective. We also wanted to focus on scientific papers and removed book chapters and technical reports in the filtering. Review papers and conference papers were also excluded.
The search and filtering yielded 45 journal papers for which a descriptive analysis was performed, looking at how the publishing is distributed over time, across transport modes, and across the first-author affiliation country. The key themes and messages from the literature are synthesized and presented. The outcome is a comprehensive overview of the existing research which can help identify areas where the contingency planning for the future transport system is lacking.

References
Trafikverket (2020). Inriktningsunderlag inför transportinfrastrukturplaneringen för perioden 2022−2033 och 2022−2037.
Trafikverket (2021). Förslag till nationell plan för transportinfrastrukturen 2022–2033.
Trafikverket (2022a). Trender i transportsystemet, Trafikverkets omvärldsanalys 2022.
Trafikverket (2022b). Färdplan - digitaliserat vägtransportsystem, version år 2022.

Programme committee
Global Trends Impacting Transport

Topic
Technology and Artificial Intelligence