Root-cause analysis of transport network disruptions

The Horizon Europe project Resilient Multimodal Transport Networks (ReMuNet) aims to improve the resilience of the freight transport network in the EU in the face of disruptive events and enhancing sustainability. This is proposed to be achieved by offering network users alternate routing options and identifying disruptions and ways to mitigate their impacts.
One of the four core objectives of the ReMuNet project is to develop a standardized methodology to describe multimodal transport networks. The proposed standard is derived from existing approaches and developed together with critical stakeholders to ensure Europe-wide practicability and acceptance which can be easily transferred into appropriate regulatory frameworks ensuring more efficient communication and operational stakeholder inter-connectivity. The first task towards this core objective was to create a typology of disruptive events, which has been addressed in a prior report for Task 1.3. The task, addressed in this report, is Task 1.4: Conduct root cause and impact analysis of disruptive events. Building on typologies and classifications of disruptive events in Task 1.3, Task 1.4 reported in this deliverable focuses on tracing disruptive events back to their root causes, thus showcasing the effects of long-term transport policy, climate change, and other broad scale developments. This analysis will be utilized in Work Package 4.
This report presents different ways to analyse disruptive events, their (root) causes, consequences and impacts. The team at HUMLOG Institute (Hanken School of Economics) conducted a qualitative study that included 17 interviews, 2 focus group discussions and 53 student assignments. Five recent disruptions affecting the EU transport network were chosen and analysed for their root-causes. Root cause analysis is a systematic process used to identify the underlying causes of problems or incidents, rather than just addressing the symptoms. This study employed 5 Why’s method to analyse root causes. The aim of these analyses was to highlight to the readers on how deep the actual cause of an event could be. An analysis of all related factors and causes of events that have happened can help prepare for the future and reduce losses to human life and materials. Further, our results show how seemingly different and distinct events might be correlated and cause further disruptions in the network.
The mega root causes analysed in this study are root causes ultimately underlying the causes of all disruptive events currently seen in the European transport network. This report identifies them as: climate change and biodiversity loss; infrastructure and maintenance; geopolitical conflict; human behaviour and social and economic changes. By building on the typology for disruptive events developed in ReMuNet Task 1.3, this report provides insights to impacts of disruptive events on different levels, individual actor, individual nodes and links, the entire transport network, supply chains and society as a whole. This study is an important part of achieving the ultimate goal of the project: the building of a collaborative platform and taking the first steps towards an Artificial Intelligence (AI) based self-learning transport network to promote synchro-modal relay transport across European rail, road, and inland waterways to improve network resilience, reduce emissions, and boost corridor efficiency during disruptive events. The root causes identified here, along with the terminology and typology developed in the previous task in this qualitative study will be a critical input to the mathematical models that follow in subsequent work packages.