Suitability Evaluation of Railway Embankment and Bridge Configurations in Desert Areas Considering Sand Drift Potential

Aeolian processes in deserts endanger railway infrastructure through sand burial and abrasion. Conventional railway route-selection methodologies, however, predominantly rely on qualitative expert judgements and overlook the physical wind-sand dynamics. To overcome this gap, we develop a quantitative assessment framework for railway embankment versus bridge configurations, grounded in aeolian physics and explicitly designed to capture the directional and energetic characteristics of sand-transporting winds. We used ERA5-Land reanalysis wind data (2001–2020) to calculate resultant drift potential (RDP), wind directional variability (WDV), and their inter-annual trends. These aeolian parameters were converted into a look-up-table scoring framework, which captures the contrasting vulnerabilities of embankment and bridge structures. Our global-scale assessment reveals that railway embankment generally achieve higher suitability scores (2–24) across most deserts, whereas bridges exhibit localized advantages (scores 9–12) in regions with intense and unidirectional sand flux, particularly in northern and western China. Beyond engineering decision-making, the scoring outputs also serve as a first-order indicator for identifying areas where railway construction may minimally disturb natural wind-sand processes. This physically-based framework compensates for the lack of quantitative atmospheric forcing parameters in traditional planning, offering a practical tool for structural selection and a reference for long-term hazard mitigation under changing climate.