Future-proofing Klang Valley’s veins with REBET: a framework for directing transportation technologies towards infrastructure resilience

The transportation industry is in the midst of a revolution with technologies, such as shared vehicles, drones, and autonomous vehicles, that are poised to reshape the way we move. Yet, the multitude of technologies present a difficulty in prioritizing which technologies should be invested in. While focusing on Klang Valley’s transportation system, this research proposes the REsilience Brittleness and Emerging Technologies (REBET) framework, which aims to identify the transportation technologies with the highest potential of strengthening the system’s resilience. We used a Dephi technique to identify the Sources of Brittleness (SBs) in the system and technologies with the highest relevance to the Malaysian setting. Using multiple linear regression, we then derived a relationship between the two aspects. The framework defines the relative resilience of the technologies according to their forecasted ability to eliminate system brittleness. The results ranked 23 technologies, with the topmost recommendations being ITS, Big Data, and Smart Buses. We highlight REBET’s robustness as a global decision-making tool for infrastructure managers, researchers, and policymakers to identify ideal technologies for their transportation systems.