Resilience index for earth retaining systems in road infrastructure

The construction of roads often involves cuts and embankments, requiring the use of earth retaining walls. This study estimates a resilience index for these systems based on four fundamental criteria: robustness, redundancy, resourcefulness, and recovery. To achieve this, quantitative weightings based on a multicriteria analysis were applied to the service life of both a rigid and a flexible retaining wall systems near the city of Bogotá, Colombia, considering maximum surface acceleration and groundwater level variations. The results indicate a resilience index of 0.78 for the rigid system and 0.82 for the flexible system, indicating that the flexible system exhibits a higher resilience capacity. These findings can inform risk management policies and resource optimization strategies, ultimately reducing entropy during the design, construction, and operation phases of road projects.