Integrating storm surge modeling and accessibility analysis for planning of special-needs hurricane shelters in Panama City, Florida

Abstract

ABSTRACT We investigated the transportation accessibility of special needs populations to Special Needs Shelters (SpNS) by incorporating storm surge modeling into hurricane shelter planning in Panama City, a medium-sized city located close to the landfall location of Hurricane Michael. The storm surge model validated for Hurricane Michael was used to predict the coastal inundation. Using this model, A Geographical Information Systems (GIS)-based optimization methodology was developed for evaluating the accessibility to special needs shelters and repurposing existing regular hurricane shelters for special needs populations. With the proposed optimization approach, the average travel time per person-trip decreased from 28.5 minutes to 7.4 minutes after repurposing one regular shelter and to 4.3 minutes when three regular shelters converted to SpNS. Emergency plans can be improved by the proposed methodology, which can estimate the inundation zones by storm surge modeling and allocate the emerging shelter demand by accessibility analysis and location modeling.