01557908

Component

The objectives of this study are 1) to develop an incident duration model which can account for spatial dependence of duration observations, and 2) to investigate the impacts of hurricane on incident duration. Highway incident data from New York City and its surrounding regions before and after hurricane Sandy was used for the study. Moran’s I statistics confirmed that durations of neighboring incidents were spatially correlated. Moreover, Lagrange Multiplier tests suggested that the spatial dependence should be captured in a spatial lag specification. A spatial error model, a spatial lag model and a standard model without consideration of spatial effects were developed. The spatial lag model is found to outperform the others by capturing the spatial dependence of incident durations via a spatially lagged dependent variable. It was further used to assess the effects of hurricane-related variables on incident duration. The results show that the incidents during and post the hurricane are expected to have 116.3% and 79.8% longer durations than those occurred in the regular time. However, no significant increase in incident duration is observed in the evacuation period before Sandy’s landfall. Those findings can provide insights to aid in the development of hurricane evacuation plans and emergency management strategies.

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AHB20 Freeway Operations.

01550057

15-4669

English

17p

2015

Transportation Research Board 94th Annual Meeting

Digital/other

Figures; Maps; References; Tables

Emergency management; Evacuation; Hurricanes; Incident management; Spatial analysis; Time duration; Traffic delays; Traffic incidents

Hurricane Sandy, 2012

New York Metropolitan Area

Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; Planning and Forecasting; Security and Emergencies; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2015 Paper #15-4669

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Dec 30 2014 1:33PM