Evaluation and improvement of the resilience of a transportation system against epidemic diseases: A system dynamics approach

The influential role of health protocols in preventing the spread of the COVID-19 disease has led governments to seek effective methods for implementing these protocols in the society. Considering the importance of public transportation system in spread of viruses, this paper introduces and analyzes some methods of inspecting urban public transportation companies using system dynamics approach. First, the base model, which represents the status of a public transportation terminal, was created and validated using a system dynamics simulation approach. Then the impact of two penalty policies, including fixed penalty policy (FPP) and variable penalty policy (VPP) on the violations within the terminal was investigated. The simulation results show that the variable penalty policy significantly reduces the violations of passenger terminal drivers. Next, the extended model was developed which considered several terminals. Finally, by presenting two policies of fixed inspector assignment (FIA) and variable inspector assignment (VIA), the effect of four scenarios of combining inspection and penalties policies was investigated. The simulation results showed that combining the variable penalty and variable inspector assignment policies could significantly reduce terminal violations. Also, the implementation of this policy does not require an additional inspector. The results can help city managers to adopt appropriate inspection policies.