A Conceptual Framework to Assess the Influence of Weather on Transport Sustainability in the Indian Context

Abstract

The paper presents a concept for designing an assessment framework to capture the influence of weather on travel behaviour and transport-associated footprint. The primary objective of the work was to create a platform to enable the development of adaptive strategies and policies to enhance the resilience and sustainability of transportation systems in the face of climate change. The investigative process proposed in the study is twofold. Initially, it focuses on understanding the mode choice behaviour of commuters, and afterwards, it demonstrates the technique to capture transport-associated footprint. A novel integration of grey theory with the advanced analytic hierarchy process helped design a sophisticated approach to analysing mode choices, enhancing travel efficiency. Besides, the study proposes a method to rationally capture the transport footprint and the impacts of accelerated footprints on the sustainability of transport infrastructure. The study highlights the necessity of calibrating and sensitising the method using field data-based experiments to enhance accuracy.