Evacuation transportation modeling: An overview of research, development, and practice

Abstract

This paper presents a review of highway-based evacuation modeling and simulation and its evolution over the past decade. The review includes the major components of roadway transportation planning and operations, including the current state of modeling in the forecasting of evacuation travel demand, distribution and assignment of evacuation demand to regional road networks to reach destinations, assignment of evacuees to various modes of transportation, and evaluation and testing of alternative management strategies to increase capacity of evacuation networks or manage demand. Although this discussion does not cover recent work in other modes used in evacuation such as air, rail, and pedestrian, this paper does highlight recent interdisciplinary modeling work in evacuation to help bridge the gap between the behavioral sciences and engineering and the application of emerging techniques for the verification, validation, and calibration of models. The manuscript also calls attention to special considerations and logistical difficulties, which have received limited attention to date. In addition to these concerns, the following future directions are discussed: further interdisciplinary efforts, including incorporating the medical community; using new technologies for communication of warnings and traffic condition information, data collection, and increased modeling resolution and confidence; using real-time information; and further model refinements and validation.