Abstract
The fixed link between Denmark and Sweden connects two busy cities and a large international airport with many of its travelers and employees. 18,000 vehicles and 160 passenger trains transport each day more than 70,000 people across the combined road and rail Øresund Bridge and through the Øresund Tunnel, approximately 25,000 of them critical to the regional work market. Even though the risk analysis states that the likelihood of a long-term closure (100+ days) is very low Danish and Swedish transport authorities have demanded that the infrastructure operator conducts a survey of the preparedness plans already in place and map possible alternate travel routes for people and freight in case of long-term disruptions. This paper (a) delineates the concept of infrastructure, (b) describes the proceedings of the Work Group for Øresund Preparedness 2014–2016, and (c) discusses the findings presented in its final report to the Danish and Swedish transport authorities while drawing upon experiences from two recent comparable cases of infrastructure disruptions: The Champlain Bridge (2009) and the Forth Road Bridge (2015).
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Notes
- 1.
The researcher was allowed to participate in the work of the group as an observer and contributed also to the report with a section on resilience. All data not otherwise referenced in this paper can be found in the final report that was submitted to the Danish and Swedish authorities in Spring 2016 (Arbetsgruppen för Öresundsberedskap 2016).
- 2.
Unless otherwise referenced, all information about the closure of the Champlain Bridge is taken from the New York State Department of Transportation report about the incident and the new bridge project (NYSDOT 2012), while the description of the Forth Road Bridge closure builds on bridge’s official website (accessed February 2016) and Jane Arleen Breed’s account of how the events unfolded (Breed 2011).
- 3.
Interestingly, the special situation surrounding the construction of the new Lake Champlain Bridge meant that the building schedule ended up 4 years shorter than if a traditional design-bid-build method had been used and that millions of dollars were saved (APWA 2013, p. 96).
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Acknowledgements
The author wishes to thank Professor Kathleen Tierney, Natural Hazards Center, University of Colorado Boulder, Professor Henning B. Andersen, Technical University of Denmark, Head of Division Mads Ecklon and Head of Section Maximilian Ritzl, Center for Preparedness Planning and Crisis Management, Danish Emergency Management Agency, Ulla V. Eilersen, Safety Manager, Øresundsbron, and Strategic Consultant Henrik Andersson, Sweco Society AB, for useful comments to a draft of this paper. A special thanks to Ladimer Nagurney and Leif Vincentsen for directing the author’s attention towards the two recent cases of infrastructure disruption.
This research was carried out with funding from the READ-project (Resilience Capacities Assessment for Critical Infrastructures Disruptions), funded by the European Commission DG Home.
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Dahlberg, R. (2016). Bridging the Gap. In: Kotsireas, I., Nagurney, A., Pardalos, P. (eds) Dynamics of Disasters—Key Concepts, Models, Algorithms, and Insights. DOD 2015 2016. Springer Proceedings in Mathematics & Statistics, vol 185. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43709-5_3
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