The ability of the transportation system to provide service to freight carriers is subject to disruption from natural disasters, weather, terrorist acts, work stoppages, and other potential transportation disruptions. We need to work with freight partners to plan a transportation system that can recover quickly and prevent long disruptions to state regional economics.
By conducting this research we will
1) provide a review of other organizations' assessments of the vulnerability of Washington's freight transportation system
2) develop a geographic information system with the transportation network depicting, quantifying, and inventorying the major freight flows in the State of Washington
3) create a map of freight flows by major industry sectors that utilize different aspects of the geographic transportation network
5) specify the requirements of a statewide freight resiliency simulation.

Between July 5, 2008 and December 31, 2008 the project team was able to complete the development of the GIS tool. We have also completed the first draft of one of the two case studies to be implemented. We have also begun the second case study and are still in the process of compiling the data. We have therefore completed the first three project tasks, and are more than 50% completed with the fourth task.

In this final period we will complete the final case study, and write the final report which will include recommendations as to the statewide freight resiliency simulation (task 5).

The development of the GIS tool, and collection of the case study data has been very time consuming. More time consuming than originally expected. As expected, we have learned a great deal about the data required for this type of analysis. This has guided the submission of a research statement to the National Cooperative Freight Research Program which, with the support of Barb Ivanov, has been selected for an NCFRP project. The lack of corridor level commodity flow information is recognized by other states aswell, whom supported the proposal.

Presented a poster at TRB, and will have a paper published in the Transportation Research Record titled "Structuring a Definition of Resilience for the Freight Transportation System".