Optimization models for large scale network evacuation planning and management: A literature review

Abstract

This study presents a comprehensive review of network-based large scale emergency evacuation planning and management literature. Evacuation planning and management approaches are mostly based on traffic assignment approaches. For that reason, for a complete grasp of the ideas in evacuation planning and management, the relevant literature in urban transportation is covered including traffic assignment approaches, travel time modeling to represent congestion and traffic flow propagation approaches. Correct estimation of evacuation response rates and demand distributions by human behavior studies covered in this review contribute to an efficient evacuation planning and management at a large extent. Since it is not cost effective to design the evacuation network from scratch for rare disasters, the existing road network must be efficiently used for avoiding congestion to enable the evacuation of the disaster area in a timely manner. We present studies that propose effective supply and demand management strategies that aim to achieve this. We focus on macroscopic approaches in static/dynamic, deterministic/stochastic/robust evacuation modeling that consider different evacuee behavior assumptions, traffic assignment methodologies and supply and demand management strategies. We review the optimization-based solution methodologies so as to identify research gaps and limitations and suggest future research directions.