Reliability-Oriented Route Generation Algorithm for Multimodal Transport: A Perspective from Supply Chain Reliability Enhancement

Sudden infectious diseases and other malignant events cause excessive costs in the supply chain, particularly in the transportation sector. This issue, along with the uncertainty of the development of global epidemics and the frequency of extreme natural disaster events, continues to provoke discussion and reflection. However, transport systems involve interactions between different modes, which are further complicated by the reliable coupling of multiple modes. Therefore, for the vital subsystem of the supply chain-multimodal transport, in this paper, a heuristic algorithm considering node topology and transport characteristics in a multimodal transport network (MTN): the Reliability Oriented Routing Algorithm (RORA), is proposed based on the super-network and improved k-shell (IKS) algorithm. An empirical case based on the Yangtze River Delta region of China demonstrates that RORA enables a 16% reduction in the boundary value for route failure and a reduction of about 60.58% in the route cost increase compared to the typical cost-optimal algorithm, which means that RORA results in a more reliable routing solution. The analysis of network reliability also shows that the IKS values of the nodes are positively correlated with the reliability of the MTN, and nodes with different modes may have different transport reliabilities (highest for highways and lowest for inland waterways). These findings inform a reliability-based scheme and network design for multimodal transportation.