Routing Strategies for Emergency Management Decision Support Systems During Evacuation

Abstract

Simulation studies of urban transportation networks have been increasingly applied to evacuation planning. The level of detail provided within a traffic simulation model allows for devising strategies for evacuation and emergency response. In this research, simulation model of downtown San Jose, California, transportation network is developed to evaluate the efficiency of the evacuation process under hypothetical scenarios. Although the scenarios evaluated herein are not exhaustive, they demonstrate the potential of the simulation approach for managing traffic engineering aspects of the emergency response. The scenarios described here include the use of contraflow lanes, traffic incidents on the network, and a modal shift to transit by evacuees. It was found that among the tested scenarios, reduction in number of vehicles on the road through increased public transit ridership in conjunction with rerouting vehicles and contraflow operations on key corridors would be the most efficient approach. The major contribution of this study is the ability to examine not only the travel times for evacuees but also mobility and accessibility for emergency vehicles. The time to access location(s) under distress, while ensuring efficient evacuation operations at the same time, is critical to reducing losses during an unfolding human-caused disaster.

Vehicle Routing Optimization for Humanitarian Supply Chain: A Systematic Review of Approaches and Solutions

“…Lei et al [69] minimized the expected outage duration of loads. Yu et al [70] optimized the efficiency of the evacuation process. Wang et al [71] focused on the minimization of risk.…”

“…Four (4) papers were categorized as path planning. Three path planning models reported in [70,71,89] were simulations where vehicle paths were simulated for a disaster area. [109] considered Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) for a path planned in a disaster area.…”

“…Manopiniwes et al [96] and Ahmed et al [117] used a commercial solver but didn't mention the name of the software. Yu et al [70] used VISSIM simulation software. Hannoun et al [46] used Netlog simulation software.…”

Evaluation of field visit planning heuristics during rapid needs assessment in an uncertain post-disaster environment

“…Furthermore, simulation models often have an excellent capability of providing a graphical user interface that can facilitate applying these models as a decision support tool and improve understanding of the underlying problem settings. There is a growing body of simulation-based decision support tools that focuses on supporting various humanitarian operations (e.g., Yu et al 2014;Fikar et al 2016Fikar et al , 2018. Mishra et al (2019) present a review of simulation models developed as an analytical tool for different stages of disaster relief operations.…”

Evaluation of safety trends in construction, mining and transportation sectors in Turkey

“…Furthermore; forklifts, pallet trucks and lifting equipment such as mobile cranes, conveyors, hazardous chemicals, unsafe rack and stacking methods, unsuitable platform applications, improper electrical and ventilation systems, manual lifting and carrying works, workload, lack of education are among the leading reasons of occupational accidents. In maritime transport works; crane, forklift accidents and material strike or overthrow accidents are also widely encountered (Kristiansen, 2013;Islam and Hernandez, 2016;Liu and Moini, 2015;Yu et al, 2014).…”