01477516

Component

https://doi.org/10.3141/2376-03

http://scholar.google.com...dara&publication_year=2013

The objective of this paper is to illustrate the sensitivity of evacuation travel time estimates in relation to assumptions about evacuee route choice behavior. The user equilibrium (UE) assignment procedure in which evacuees are assumed to choose the shortest (or fastest) path from their origins to destinations is considered as the base case. Few studies have documented the actual route choice behavior of evacuees during a hurricane. These studies were used to develop realistic route choice behavior assumptions: the types of route choices and proportion of evacuees for those types. The impact of route choice behavior on evacuation performance, especially travel times, was then explored with a large-scale regional simulation model of the Hampton Roads, Virginia, region. The model was developed in an earlier study with real-world network data and actual evacuee behavioral data. The analysis indicates that using UE to generate average travel time estimates for evacuation planning significantly underestimates the actual evacuation travel times. The extent of underestimation of evacuation travel times depends on the total evacuation demand (a function of storm intensity) and the percentage of evacuees willing to use en route information to seek alternate routes when facing congestion. For the three en route percentages reported in the literature (30%, 50%, and 70%), the UE travel times were 58%, 42%, and 33% lower than actual travel times in a Category 1 evacuation; 94%, 71%, and 58% lower than in a Category 2 evacuation; and 90%, 69%, and 54% lower than in a Category 3 evacuation.

01505854

13-2227

English

pp 20–26

2013

Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board

9780309286954

Print

Figures (7) ; References (19) ; Tables (4)

Estimating; Evacuation; Route choice; Traffic equilibrium; Travel demand; Travel time

Data and Information Technology; Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; Security and Emergencies; I71: Traffic Theory; I73: Traffic Control

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Feb 5 2013 12:29PM

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• Learning from Crisis: Transit Evacuation in Honolulu, Hawaii, After Tsunami Warnings
• Modeling of Bus Transit Driver Availability for Effective Emergency Evacuation in Disaster Relief
• No-Notice Evacuation Management: Ramp Closures Under Varying Budgets and Demand Scenarios
• Predictive Quality of a Time-Dependent Sequential Logit Evacuation Demand Model
• Roundabout Performance Evaluation in a Network Evacuation: A Case of Intelligent Decomposed Network Simulations
• Using National Household Travel Survey Data for the Assessment of Transportation System Vulnerabilities