Analyzing the impact of Hurricane Florence on Freight Transportation in North Carolina using Telematics data

Freight transportation plays a critical role in supply chain. Any disruptions caused by natural or man-made disasters could have a significant impact on freight transportation. There are robust data about the movement of passenger vehicles or people, but there is lack of reliable movement data for freight transportation. This research aims to use telematics technology which tracks truck movements to analyze the impact of hurricane Florence on freight transportation in North Carolina. We retrieved telematics data from RobinSight from September 5^th, 2018 to September 25^th, 2018 that covers time periods of before, during, and after Hurricane Florence. The major highways and road segments that were heavily impacted by hurricane Florence include I-40, I-95, and US highways 17 and 70. The trip and visit data for the trucks travelling across those roads were provided by RobinSight.  The collected data contains 587,000  features and  was preprocessed and cleaned for analysis of changes in freight traffic flow as roads were closed and reopened. Through analysis of the telematics data, we were able to study the impact of hurricane Florence on freight transportation such as  the extent of freight traffic rerouting, the resilience of the network, and how long it took freight movements returned to normal. The findings of this research allows us evaluate the capacity and resilience of the freight transportation network and provide design suggestions for improvement.