Impact of connected and autonomous vehicles on road network resilience in Belgium

2 The emergence of Connected and Automated Vehicles (CAVs) has brought about significant 3 transformations in the transportation industry, leading to noteworthy effects on various aspects, including 4 the resilience of road networks. CAVs have the ability to receive and transmit real-time information about 5 road conditions, enabling them to avoid congestion caused by disruptions and optimize their routes to 6 enhance the network's resilience through rerouting. Moreover, these vehicles also have a considerable 7 impact on road capacity, which contributes to strengthening the overall resilience of the network. 8 Consequently, it is crucial to evaluate the influence of CAVs on the resilience of road networks. However, 9 to the best knowledge of the authors, there is currently a lack of studies that comprehensively assess the 10 resilience of large-scale road networks, considering all dimensions of resilience, such as redundancy, 11 robustness, and recovery speed. Therefore, this paper aims to evaluate the impact of CAVs on the resilience 12 of a large-scale road network in Belgium. The study contributes to the existing literature by employing a 13 simulation-based method to quantify the resilience triangle of the network, encompassing all dimensions 14 of network resilience. The results of this study demonstrate that the presence of CAVs can significantly 15 enhance network resilience in various scenarios, varying in a range of 4.4% for a 10% penetration rate to 16 59.9% for a 100% penetration rate. These findings can provide valuable insights to researchers and 17 policymakers involved in the deployment of autonomous vehicles.