Resilience assessment of a weighted highway–railway composite network in Shandong province, China

Highway–railway composite networks are essential components of regional integrated transport systems, and their resilience directly affects transport service continuity and socioeconomic stability. To overcome the limitation of traditional unweighted models in capturing transport intensity differences, this study develops a weighted highway–railway composite network for Shandong province, China, incorporating departure frequency, station hierarchy and transport mode characteristics. A three-stage resilience assessment framework based on resistance, adaptation and recovery capabilities is proposed. Weighted network efficiency, connectivity, Shannon entropy and a spatial vector model are integrated to quantify overall network resilience. Random and deliberate attacks are simulated to investigate network performance evolution under different disruption scenarios. Results show that the weighted composite network exhibits ‘small-world’ characteristics and strong connectivity. High weighted-degree hub nodes have a significant impact on network resilience, and failures of critical nodes, such as Qingdao North Station and Jinan Station, lead to rapid performance degradation. Deliberate attacks cause greater damage than random attacks. Compared with unweighted models, the proposed weighted model more accurately identifies the importance of high-frequency transport corridors and functionally critical nodes. The findings provide theoretical support for critical infrastructure protection, recovery-resource-optimisation and resilience-enhancement strategies.