Detecting Important Links in Urban Transportation Networks (Case Study: Isfahan Urban Transportation Network)

In this paper, identifying important links in urban transportation networks has been investigated. Important links are the ones which cutting them makes most of origin-destination trips be inappropriate in the network. To achieve this purpose, an index namely “k-link connected index” is used which originally has been introduced to measure the efficiency of communication networks. Therefore, with altering this index, we have made it useful for measuring the efficiency of transportation networks in relation to occurring stochastic incidents and as the main contribution of the paper, important links have been identified by utilizing this modified index. Also, an effective approach based on a heuristic methods, is proposed for identifying unimportant links. The efficiency of proposed approach have been evaluated with implementing it on a real medium-sized network, i.e. Sioux Falls. Finally, its applicability in relation to large networks has been shown with implementing it on Isfahan transportation network.