Web-based transport management tool-suite (KeepOperational) for crisis management

Abstract

A well working transportation infrastructure is crucial for modern societies and the mobility of people. The general public relies on a sound infrastructure to fulfill their increasing and individual mobility needs. This means a wide range of transport necessities – e.g. daily way to work and daily (consumer, service) needs. In the event of a crisis, e.g. caused by a natural hazard, the transport infrastructure becomes vital for different reasons. The people have to be evacuated or rescued from the affected area. Furthermore, relief aid and supplies, as well as rescue forces do require unimpaired access to the crisis area. Natural disasters, like an earthquake or a flooding, are disturbing the transport infrastructure negatively. Cascading consequences are, for example, impassable roads, disturbed railway connections and a reduced transport capacity of persons and goods. To develop evacuation strategies, to plan logistics operations of emergency forces in the affected area and to safely route these forces through the affected area, among others, routing tools are required that take into account the current state of the infrastructure [1]. The Institute of Transportation Systems of the German Aerospace Center has developed KeepOperational, a web-based, integrated decision support tool for traffic management and crisis logistics. As a key feature, this system can directly inject impairments of the transportation infrastructure – derived from various sources – into the routing network so that these disturbances will be considered by the routing algorithms.