Framing resilience in public transportation systems, inspired by biomimicry

Abstract

Resilience is a concept that describes the capability to be restored after unprecedented events, originally emerged from biology and human sciences. This paper aims to explore what a resilient public transportation system is and how nature’s wisdom can be used as an inspiration for the creation of resilience in the area of mobility, by linking public transportation systems, biomimicry and resilience together. To this end, qualitative co-creative workshops were conducted with eleven domain experts from public transportation, biomimicry, and biology. The experts addressed several factors contributing to resilience in public transport that could be categorized into four aggregated dimensions: resilience through system organization, resilience through information management, resilience through operating performance, and resilience through subsystem integration. Finally, a conceptual wheel framework on factors of resilient public transportation systems is proposed, aiming to shed light on future public transport developments, where a systemic perspective is to be adopted.