A Case Study on the Impacts of Connected Vehicle Technology on No-Notice Evacuation Clearance Time

Karzan Bahaaldin,Parth Bhavsar,Plaban Das,Ryan Fries

doi:10.1155/2017/6357415

Abstract

No-notice evacuations of metropolitan areas can place significant demands on transportation infrastructure. Connected vehicle (CV) technology, with real-time vehicle to vehicle and vehicle to infrastructure communications, can help emergency managers to develop efficient and cost-effective traffic management plans for such events. The objectives of this research were to evaluate the impacts of CVs on no-notice evacuations using a case study of a downtown metropolitan area. The microsimulation software VISSIM was used to model the roadway network and the evacuation traffic. The model was built, calibrated, and validated for studying the performance of traffic during the evacuation. The researchers evaluated system performance with different CV penetration rates (from 0 to 30 percent CVs) and measured average speed, average delays, and total delays. The findings suggest significant reductions in total delays when CVs reached a penetration rate of 30 percent, albeit increases in delays during the beginning of the evacuation. Additionally, the benefits could be greater for evacuations that last longer and with higher proportions of CVs in the vehicle stream.

Highlights

Evacuating people to safe places during natural and manmade disasters has been required throughout history
The findings suggest that the Connected vehicle (CV) slowed the entire traffic stream during time intervals one to four, likely due to their speed reduction and lane choice in response to downstream
The analyzed data showed that using communication capabilities of CVs can improve the overall traffic performance during a no-notice evacuation in the East St

Summary

Introduction

Evacuating people to safe places during natural and manmade disasters has been required throughout history. Transportation operation engineers have a responsibility to ensure that the roadways function at their optimum capacities, in order to evacuate people from disaster areas in the shortest possible time. Evacuations can be categorized into two main types, based on the available time to respond: no-notice and short notice. The first type is considered when a disaster occurs without prior notice such as terrorist attacks, nuclear disasters, and earthquakes. The second type is when responders have some short notice such as wildfires, hurricanes, and flooding. It is preferred to have evacuation plans for both short-notice and no-notice cases prior to the disaster, but it is more necessary for no-notice evacuations [1]

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