An Optimization Model for Guiding Pedestrian–Vehicle Mixed Flows During an Emergency Evacuation

Abstract

In most metropolitan areas, an emergency evacuation may require a potentially large number of pedestrians to walk some distance to access their passenger cars or resort to transit systems. In this process, the massive number of pedestrians may place a tremendous burden on vehicles in the roadway network, especially at critical intersections. Thus, the effective road enforcement of the vehicle and pedestrian flows and the proper coordination between these two flows at critical intersections during a multimodal evacuation process is a critical issue in evacuation planning. This article presents an integrated linear model for the design of optimized flow plans for massive mixed pedestrian–vehicle flows within an evacuation zone. The optimized flow can also be used to generate signal timing plans at critical intersections. In addition, the linear nature of the model can circumvent the computational burden to apply in large-scale networks. An illustrating example of the evacuation around the M&T Bank Stadium in downtown Baltimore, MD, is presented and used to demonstrate the model's capability to address the complex interactions between vehicle and pedestrian flows within an evacuation zone. Results of simulation experiments verify the applicability of our model to a real-world scenario and further indicate that accounting for such conflicting movements will yield more reliable estimation of an evacuation's required clearance time.