01046125

Component

This paper documents studies of two real-world network evacuation cases, each with a different, but proven, simulation software package. The purpose of these studies was to examine whether the rate of evacuees’ compliance with predetermined route/destination assignments would have an impact on the efficiency of evacuation operations. Results from both cases suggest that a rate of less than 100% compliance does not compromise evacuation efficiency. In fact, although this is counter-intuitive, evacuation efficiency would actually improve as a result of “sensible” non-compliance on the part of the evacuees. A closer observation of the results revealed that the somewhat unexpected improvement results from a reduction in congestion along designated evacuation routes as evacuees spread out to less prominent parallel streets and other non-congested outbound routes. This suggests that by being limited by the zone-to-zone and one-to-one assignment framework, conventional evacuation plans may have fallen short of providing the most efficient guidance to evacuees. To address this issue, some systematic means, perhaps simulation-based, should be performed to assess the zone partitions, route designations, and destination assignments in existing evacuation plans. Thus, evacuation planning with route/destination assignments based on origin zones may be flawed and may deserve reconsideration. After all, once en route, where an evacuee is coming from is of far less consequence than where he or she is going.

01042056

07-2396

English

25p

2007

Transportation Research Board 86th Annual Meeting

CD-ROM

Figures (11) ; References (18) ; Tables (2)

Dynamic traffic assignment; Economic efficiency; Evacuation; Guidelines; Route choice; Routes and routing

Clearance time (Evacuations); Destinations; Emergency evacuations; Noncompliance; Precautionary emergency evacuations

Highways; Planning and Forecasting; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2007 Paper #07-2396

TRIS, TRB

Feb 8 2007 7:05PM