Health-care centers form a critical part in citizen services during disaster management. Road networks play an important role in facilitating access to such services from settlements. The importance of a road depends on its utility in this respect along with its geospatial characteristics. In this article, road importance measures are proposed that consider spatial properties as well as path utlizations. These metrics are then utilized to identify optimal links of the network in terms of safety and sustainability towards relief-facility access even in severe hazard conditions. A case study is presented for a flood scenario in the Bankura district of West Bengal, India. The proposed approach provides a more realistic assessment of the road importance as compared to conventional link analysis. The identification of optimal road links help in several mitigation and rescue strategies for disaster management.
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