Journal of Natural Disaster Science

UPPER AND LOWER BOUNDS OF TERMINAL RELIABILITY OF ROAD NETWORKS : AN EFFICIENT METHOD WITH BOOLEAN ALGEBRA

Hiroshi WAKABAYASHI
Associate Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, Osaka Prefectural College of Technology
and
Yasunori IIDA
Professor, Department of Transportation Engineering, Kyoto University

(Received 4 March 1992 and in revised form 15 July 1992)

Abstract

An efficient method for calculating the upper and lower bounds of reliability between a pair of nodes in a road network is presented. The proposed method is characterized by the use of only partial minimal path sets and cut sets for the calculation, whereas the conventional methods require all the minimal path sets and cut sets between a pair of nodes. The effectiveness that results from the use of the partial path and cut sets is discussed, and an algorithm for the calculation of reliability has been developed. An efficient way for selecting the partial path and cut sets is reported, and a numerical example of a small size network is executed to examine the validity of the method.

Key words

road network reliability, upper and lower bounds of reliability, Boolean algebra, efficient reliabilit analysis, partial minimal path sets and cut sets