Exploring the Potential of Using Privately-Owned, Self-Driving Autonomous Vehicles for Evacuation Assistance

Thomas Shirley,Bhavya Padmanabha,Pamela Murray-Tuite,Gurcan Comert,Jiayun Shen,Nathan Huynh,Peter Chen

doi:10.1155/2021/2156964

Thomas Shirley, Bhavya Padmanabha + Show 5 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1155/2021/2156964

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Abstract

The potential use of privately-owned autonomous vehicles (AVs) for the evacuation of carless households threatened by hurricanes is underexplored. Based on 518 original survey responses from South Carolina (SC) residents, an ordered logistic model was developed to determine the willingness of individuals to temporarily share their AVs for evacuation without their presence. The model results indicated that respondents who (a) were unemployed, (b) had experience giving disaster relief assistance, (c) took regular religious trips and were more comfortable with AVs (d) delivering packages and (e) being purchased and shared for income in the next five years were more willing to share for evacuation. Respondents who (a) were aged 65 or older, (b) had income below $ 15,000 per year, and (c) had less than two social media accounts were less willing to share. The model was applied to a state-wide synthetic population to simulate a disaster scenario in SC under different AV market penetration ( p ) scenarios to determine the potential use of AVs for evacuation assistance. Monte Carlo simulation results indicated that the percentage of households that can be evacuated increased linearly with respect to p , by 5.5 % for every 1 % increase in p until p was nearly 20 % . When p was 30 % or higher, the number of shared AVs was sufficient to evacuate all households in need. Therefore, in SC, if privately-owned AVs are widely available, they could serve as a viable alternative or be used to supplement the traditional evacuation programs that rely on buses.

Highlights

In recent years, the southeastern U.S has experienced strong hurricanes, from Hurricane Joaquin creating historic flood levels in Columbia, South Carolina in 2015 [1] to Hurricane Irma causing mass evacuations and hundreds of deaths [2] and Hurricane Florence causing record-setting flooding in the Carolinas [3]. e intensity and frequency of these storms are expected to increase [4]. e coastal population in the southeast is growing faster than any other region in the U.S [5], indicating the potential for greater destruction from future storms
This paper presents an ordinal logit model developed from original survey responses from South Carolina (SC) residents to (1) determine the public’s willingness to let state and/or federal agencies use their autonomous vehicles (AVs) to assist others in evacuations and (2) identify factors that affect their willingness. e model is applied to a synthetic SC population and used with simulation to determine what percentage of the critical transportation need (CTN) population can be evacuated, incorporating both the predicted level of the public’s willingness to share their AVs and different AV market penetration levels
Our study explores the use of temporarily shared AVs to assist SC CTN households evacuate from a hurricane. e integration of shared AVs could aid in the service gap that public transit vehicles do not provide

Summary

Introduction

The southeastern U.S has experienced strong hurricanes, from Hurricane Joaquin creating historic flood levels in Columbia, South Carolina in 2015 [1] to Hurricane Irma causing mass evacuations and hundreds of deaths [2] and Hurricane Florence causing record-setting flooding in the Carolinas [3]. e intensity and frequency of these storms are expected to increase [4]. e coastal population in the southeast is growing faster than any other region in the U.S [5], indicating the potential for greater destruction from future storms. E objective of this study is to explore the system’s feasibility of using privately-owned AVs as a viable alternative or as a supplement to the traditional evacuation programs that rely on buses from the public’s willingness to share perspective (for this potential AV ownership future) and an evacuee demand coverage perspective for a hurricane in SC. To this end, this paper presents an ordinal logit model developed from original survey responses from SC residents to (1) determine the public’s willingness to let state and/or federal agencies use their AVs to assist others in evacuations and (2) identify factors that affect their willingness.

Literature Review

Survey Data Overview

Simulation Scenarios

Results and Discussion