Land transport network resilience to cascading failures: A systematic literature review of modeling, evaluation, and recovery

Local failures in land transport networks can escalate into systemic paralysis through cascading effects, severely reducing accessibility and the efficiency of travel. The land transport network encompasses surface passenger and freight transportation systems, including road, rail, metro, public transport and land-based multimodal transport networks with clearly defined transfer connections. This study focuses on the cascading effects of interactions between services and traffic propagating within or across these modes of land transport. To summarise recent advances in modelling, evaluating and recovering from such cascading events, a systematic literature review of peer-reviewed journal articles was conducted. Using the ScienceDirect, Web of Science and Scopus databases, supplemented by cross-reference verification, 180 qualifying studies published between 2015 and 2025 were identified. Then, these research findings were systematically organised using a “modelling-evaluation-recovery” framework. At the modelling stage, load-capacity and coupled map lattice (CML) models account for nearly three-quarters of all reviewed studies, with increasing attention to multilayer interdependencies and behavioural feedback. At the evaluation stage, resilience is increasingly assessed jointly with vulnerability, robustness and reliability, using both topology- and performance-based indicators. At the recovery stage, studies propose interventions such as rerouting, mode-shift management, critical component prioritisation and resource allocation to accelerate functional restoration. Despite these advances, a gap between research and practice remains. Contributing factors include insufficient operational data and calibration, overly simplified behavioural and institutional assumptions, and the computational burden of large-scale, high-fidelity simulations. This paper examines how these limitations constrain implementation, proposing actionable solutions such as dynamic behavioural modelling, scenario libraries, data assimilation and real-world validation methods. This review maps advanced methods and metrics and provides guidance on selecting models and designing decision support tools for improving the resilience of land transport networks to cascading failures.