Evacuation Of Population Research Articles

Development of an Interval-Based Evacuation Management Model in Response to Nuclear-Power Plant Accident

Nuclear-power-plant emergency management is very important, which can be used to avoid nuclear accident and radiation leak accident and the emergency action swiftly taken beyond the normal work procedure to mitigate the accident consequences. Evacuation management for large crowds after accidents involves a number of processes and factors with socio-economic and environmental implications. These processes and factors, as well as their interactions, are associated with a variety of uncertainties. In this study, an interval-based evacuation management (IBEM) model is developed in response to such challenges, based on interval-parameter linear programming (ILP) technique that can tackle uncertainties presented as interval values. The IBEM model is applied to a case study and then solved through an interactive algorithm that does not lead to more complicated intermediate submodels and has a relatively low computational requirement. Two scenarios are analyzed based on different policies of total capital considerations. A number of decision alternatives could be directly generated based on results from the IBEM model, which provide bases for in-depth analyses of tradeoffs among evacuation population, system cost, and constraint-violation risk.

An Exploration into Green Land System and Unexpected Disaster Prevention in Mountain City: A Case Study of the Shapingba Downtown in Chongqing

The fast urbanization is incurred with an increasing frequency and variety of sudden burst of disasters, especially in the mountain city. Its complex geographical environment restrains the population evacuation and the refuge; therefore, it is of great significance to explore into the disaster prevention in the mountain city. The green land system plays a positive role in urban disaster prevention and relief. With the analysis of deficiencies facing Shapingba district of Chongqing in the use of the greening system, plus theories of the green land system and the disaster prevention, the paper discusses how to improve the urban function of disaster prevention and relief via the green land system. To be specific, the green land system can be relied on to strengthen the urban system of disaster prevention; the network-shape green land system should be improved to form appropriate disaster prevention division and level; the route of disaster prevention and refuge is referenced to reasonably allocate the urban green land; the urban public green land is increased to enlarge the refuge area; many trees are planted to work as the isolating belt of disaster prevention.

Role of Transit in Carless Evacuation Planning

During evacuations, the needs of transit-depended and carless populations require special attention and add to the complexity of evacuation logistics. The objective of this paper is to examine the role of transit in the evacuation of carless populations as part of a comprehensive evacuation plan. For this purpose, a case study is presented describing the development of a large-scale simulation/optimization model for the Birmingham, Alabama region that considers evacuation of carless populations with transit in the event of flooding. Flooding evacuation studies can be useful in evaluating various alternatives to evacuate people, identifying alternative routes based on historical experience of flooded areas and supporting optimal assignment of rescue personnel and optimization of their routes. The paper first provides a synthesis of the state of practice in carless evacuation using transit. Then the study methodology is presented, and details are offered on model selection, development, and testing; study site characteristics; study scenarios modeled; and related assumptions. Study scenarios consider vehicle evacuation with and without evacuation of carless populations from the affected area to nearby shelters using transit assets. Consideration is given to the fact that some network links would not be accessible because of the flooding, and thus lane closures are modeled in the study scenarios to increase the realism of the model. The paper demonstrates the opportunities and requirements related to the use of transit for local emergency evacuations while best serving the needs and interests of carless populations and the public at large.

Congested emergency evacuation of a population using a finite automata approach

In this paper, we address a model for population evacuation during a congested emergency event. The model employs cellular automata for space modeling and the Schadschneider model to derive the transition probabilities for the motion of the pedestrians. We describe an extension of the transition probability model that includes a component to take into account the intuitive idea that speed can be considered a direct function of population density in the modeled environment. A simulation program was encoded in C++ because of the efficiency, portability, and robustness of the programming language; the program is available from the authors upon request for educational and research purposes. A real situation was modeled and simulated with the program. All the data generated were analyzed to show the efficiency and accuracy of the new approach. Interesting new insights emerged from this analysis; notably, the results obtained are consistent with a well-known extreme value distribution.

Analysis of the effect of radiation criteria for population evacuation on the socioeconomic consequences of the npp accident in fukushima prefecture (japan)

The social and economic consequences of the March 11, 2011 radiation accident at the Fukushima-1 NPP in Japan are analyzed. Data on the contamination of the territory and the expected dose load to the population are presented. The number of inhabitants who as a result of the accident were present on contaminated territory and the economic losses due to the evacuation measures as estimated by the Technical Crisis Center at IBRAE RAN are given. The results are compared with data obtained by foreign specialists.

Bridge Seismic Retrofit Program Planning to Maximize Postearthquake Transportation Network Capacity

The bridge network, as part of the critical civil infrastructure, is susceptible to natural and man-made hazards. It is essential that the network retains its traffic-carrying capacity after a disastrous earthquake to ensure efficient evacuation of at-risk population to safe zones and timely dispatch of emergency response resources to the impacted area. Because of limited resources, it is important to prioritize bridge retrofit projects and manage disaster mitigation resources under a strategic budget plan. This paper proposes a methodology to find the optimal bridge retrofit program that aims to maximize the postdisaster network evacuation capacity. The uncertainties of earthquake intensity, bridge structural damage, and bridge traffic-carrying capacities are addressed by using a Monte Carlo simulation framework with established bridge fragility curves and damage-functionality relationships, and the effectiveness of preserving evacuation capacity is calculated on the basis of a network design model. The proposed methodological framework is demonstrated with the transportation network in Memphis, Tennessee, and numerical experiments show that the proposed framework solves the problem efficiently. The modeling framework can help transportation agencies maximize the effectiveness of investment. Emergency managers can also use the model to enhance preparedness and emergency response efficiency, which in turn improves the infrastructure systems’ resilience against extreme events.

Short- and long-term evacuation of people and livestock during a volcanic crisis: lessons from the 1991 eruption of Volcán Hudson, Chile

Human and livestock evacuation during volcanic crises is an essential component of volcanic risk management. This study investigates the evacuation of human and livestock populations from areas impacted by ashfall from the 1991 Hudson eruption, Patagonia. The eruption was one of the largest in the 20th century resulting in significant impacts on rural communities in affected areas, including the evacuation of people and livestock. In the short-term (<3 months), evacuation of people from farms and rural towns was driven primarily by ashfall and ash storm impacts on public health and essential services. Severe impacts on livestock and the inability to restore vegetation growth following pasture burial, also meant pastoral farming became unsustainable in the short term. This resulted in evacuation of farms for usually <1, but up to 4 years following the ashfall and subsequent intense ash-storms. In areas of very heavy ashfall (>1 m) or where agricultural systems were stressed (from drought and long-term low commodity prices) many farms were abandoned, resulting in permanent migration of the farm population. Farms and farmers under pressure from marginal economic returns were the least likely to cope with the 'shock' of the ashfall. The financial capacity of farmers was important in their resilience and ability to return once conditions improved, although emotional attachment to the land sometime outweighed financial considerations.Evacuation of livestock in areas affected by ash falls was undertaken by many farmers, but it was not very successful or economically justifiable. Access for livestock trucks to the impacted area was difficult due to a poor road network, ashfall and snow induced blockage, and remobilised ash inhibiting visibility. The lack of reliable records of livestock populations inhibited evacuation and efforts to supply supplementary feed to the remaining livestock. The very poor condition of livestock prior to the eruption and burial of feed following the eruption often made evacuation uneconomic as well as reducing livestock resilience to cope with the eruption and transport impacts. The lack of capacity within the local livestock market and lack of available grazing land for the influx of transported livestock were also key failings of the evacuation effort.

Evacuation Patterns of Ethnic Groups Under Fire

Background: The north of Israel is inhabited by approximately one million people, of which 60% are Jews and 40% Non-Jews. During the 34-day Second Lebanon War (July 2006), approximately 4,000 rockets of various types were fired at the civilian population in the northern part of Israel. About 300,000 people decided to spontaneously evacuate the areas under attack. Objectives: The objective of this paper was to evaluate the differences between Jews and Non-Jews in their decision to evacuate from a threatened area and to identify the factors that influenced their decision. Method: We carried out a telephone survey one year after the end of the 2nd Lebanon war. A representative sample was constructed of civilians who had resided in the north prior to the start of the war and were over 18 years of age. Results: Significant differences were found between the Jews & Non-Jews in their evacuation behaviors and expose the main reasons for evacuating or not evacuating during the war. It exposes the two groups' future plans for considering evacuation in a similar situation. 50% of Jews evacuated and only 9% of non-Jews evacuated, and this discrepancy is a difference that makes our study a worthwhile one in order to identify the different factors involved. Conclusions: The government policy-makers in Israel had chosen not to issue orders for the evacuation of the northern population during the 2nd Lebanon war, yet over 300,000 individuals evacuated. The main reasons for deciding to evacuate during the 2nd Lebanon War differed between Jews and non-Jews. This study found differences in personal decisions to evacuate; differences which may have an important influence on the future behavior of the Israeli population and particularly of the Non-Jewish population. What appears from our study was that the expected rate of future evacuation on the Non-Jewish group was expected to more than double (9% in 2006 as compared to 29.1% who would evacuate in the future). If decision makers in Israel have the intention for the Non-Jewish population to evacuate in similar future events, it is necessary to reduce barriers so that evacuation will be more likely.

Discontinuous Galerkin methods for modeling Hurricane storm surge

Storm surge due to hurricanes and tropical storms can result in significant loss of life, property damage, and long-term damage to coastal ecosystems and landscapes. Computer modeling of storm surge can be used for two primary purposes: forecasting of surge as storms approach land for emergency planning and evacuation of coastal populations, and hindcasting of storms for determining risk, development of mitigation strategies, coastal restoration and sustainability. Storm surge is modeled using the shallow water equations, coupled with wind forcing and in some events, models of wave energy. In this paper, we will describe a depth-averaged (2D) model of circulation in spherical coordinates. Tides, riverine forcing, atmospheric pressure, bottom friction, the Coriolis effect and wind stress are all important for characterizing the inundation due to surge. The problem is inherently multi-scale, both in space and time. To model these problems accurately requires significant investments in acquiring high-fidelity input (bathymetry, bottom friction characteristics, land cover data, river flow rates, levees, raised roads and railways, etc.), accurate discretization of the computational domain using unstructured finite element meshes, and numerical methods capable of capturing highly advective flows, wetting and drying, and multi-scale features of the solution. The discontinuous Galerkin (DG) method appears to allow for many of the features necessary to accurately capture storm surge physics. The DG method was developed for modeling shocks and advection-dominated flows on unstructured finite element meshes. It easily allows for adaptivity in both mesh ( h) and polynomial order ( p) for capturing multi-scale spatial events. Mass conservative wetting and drying algorithms can be formulated within the DG method. In this paper, we will describe the application of the DG method to hurricane storm surge. We discuss the general formulation, and new features which have been added to the model to better capture surge in complex coastal environments. These features include modifications to the method to handle spherical coordinates and maintain still flows, improvements in the stability post-processing (i.e. slope-limiting), and the modeling of internal barriers for capturing overtopping of levees and other structures. We will focus on applications of the model to recent events in the Gulf of Mexico, including Hurricane Ike.

Regional Evacuation of Neonatal and Pediatric Patient Populations—Mutual Aid Planning

Regional Evacuation of Neonatal and Pediatric Patient Populations—Mutual Aid Planning

Extended-Range Probabilistic Forecasts of Ganges and Brahmaputra Floods in Bangladesh

The authors have developed a new extended-range flood forecasting system for large river basins that uses satellite data and statistically rendered probabilistic weather and climate predictions to initialize basin-scale hydrological models. The forecasting system overcomes the absence of upstreamflow data, a problem that is prevalent in the developing world. Forecasts of the Ganges and Brahmaputra discharge into Bangladesh were made in real time on 1–10-day time horizons for the period 2003–08. Serious flooding of the Brahmaputra occurred in 2004, 2007, and 2008. Detailed forecasts of the flood onset and withdrawal were made 10 days in advance for each of the flooding events with correlations at 10 days ≥0.8 and Brier scores <0.05. Extensions to 15 days show useable skill. Based on the 1–10-day forecasts of the 2007 and 2008 floods, emergency managers in Bangladesh were able to act preemptively, arrange the evacuation of populations in peril along the Brahmaputra, and minimize financial loss. The particul...

Minimizing Patient Transport Times during Mass Population Evacuations

Emergency evacuation in a health care environment has focused on methods for evacuating a facility, resources for transferring patients, and sufficient capacity at sheltering facilities. What has been overlooked is the interaction between health care facility evacuation and any communitywide evacuation that would result in significant roadway congestion. This paper focuses on how to route hospital vehicles during a hurricane evacuation. To provide an analytical comparison of evacuation time, delay, and routes across various evacuation scenarios, a simulation model is developed that combines hospital and general population traffic. The tailored model incorporates mesoscopic traffic flow concepts to evaluate a region covering several hundred miles with the ability to control speeds and make decisions at the individual vehicle level. With this novel modeling approach, evacuation planners can easily program the routes, test the travel times, and quickly consider different scenarios. It can be a useful tool for hospital evacuation planners and statewide or regional evacuation planners making decisions about traffic operational strategies. The analysis includes consideration of the evacuation of the Charleston, South Carolina, metropolitan area during a hurricane threat. The study found that to evacuate all patients 6 h before a hurricane landfall, the hospital evacuation must start at least 12 h before the mandatory evacuation order (a typical 24-h notice). Alternatively, the hospital evacuation can take place at the same time as the mandatory evacuation if both begin 48 h before landfall.

Simulating hospital evacuation—the influence of traffic and evacuation time windows

Hospital operators typically do not have the luxury of carrying out a sufficient number of full-scale drills to accurately predict performance (eg, evacuation completion time, time required to evacuate a patient, when to start the evacuation, etc) during evacuation. This research presents a stochastic model via simulation to address an advanced-notice evacuation event such as a hurricane. We employ a simulation-optimization approach, comparing the benefits of additional simulation replications or additional simulation test scenarios in providing statistical accuracy in the results. We then identify the staffing and vehicle transport requirements within a pre-specified evacuation time period while minimizing cost. Moreover, we provide these managers with a modelling framework that can indicate if their current resource set is inadequate to evacuate the patient population within the specified time period. Because the operational costs can be highly variable by facility, we present two alternate cost structures in the analysis. Finally, we consider the effect of varying the evacuation start time on overall cost, as well as evacuation completion. By accounting for competing traffic flow from the mass population evacuation, it would be in the best interest of the hospital to begin their evacuation early, however this is often not an option due to the uncertainty in weather predictions several days prior to hurricane landfall.

The behaviour and evacuation experiences of WTC 9/11 evacuees with self-designated mobility impairments

The increasing accessibility of buildings to people with disabilities requires that buildings are also designed and managed to provide accessible means of escape for all. In so doing, it is important to understand the capabilities of building occupants with disabilities to evacuate and their interaction with others. This is particularly important in high-rise buildings where occupants’ primary means of accessing upper floors, i.e. lifts, may not necessarily be the preferred route in a fire emergency. Until recently there has been little in-depth study of the evacuation of mixed ability populations in a large-scale emergency building evacuation. The evacuation of the World Trade Centre (WTC) on September 11, 2001 was one of the most significant evacuations of high-rise buildings in modern times. The UK High-rise Evacuation Evaluation Database (HEED) study aimed to capture the detailed and multifaceted behaviour and experiences of the evacuees in a relational database which would facilitate the answering of research questions relating to the evacuation of high-rise buildings, including questions relating to the evacuation of people with disabilities. The information stored in the HEED comprises pre-interview questionnaires, interview transcripts and coded time, location and experience data on 271 persons who evacuated the World Trade Centre on 9/11. This paper focuses on the behaviour and experiences of six evacuees of Towers 1 and 2, who declared a mobility impairment in their pre-interview questionnaire. The individuals’ physical and medical profiles, together with their fire safety awareness profiles, as determined from the pre-interview questionnaire, free flow and semi-structured interviews are presented, together with details of their experiences as they evacuated the towers. Their need for assistance, formation of groups with their assistors or others, perception of risk and the difficulties or otherwise that they encountered are also considered. Issues with respect to a definition of disability for fire evacuation planning/design, sufficiency of escape route widths, group behaviour, nature/delivery of training programmes and emergency preparedness are discussed.

Infrastructure Planning, Design, and Management for Big Events

Infrastructure networks such as transportation systems, power grids, water utilities, and communication networks are the lifelines of modern societies. National and local economies depend heavily upon efficient and reliable infrastructure networks. Furthermore, infrastructure networks with an adequate level of service provide added value and a competitive advantage toward a region’s socioeconomic growth. The significance of infrastructure networks is even more critical under big events such as natural and man-made disasters. The restoration of societal services is highly related to the ability to transport resources to the regions affected by the disaster. For example, a transportation network is expected to play a significant role in disaster response by supporting relief activities and population evacuation, while its functionality has to be restored as fast as possible to accommodate rapid restoration of the area’s normal activities. The functional interdependencies between the transportation and other infrastructure networks such as power, energy, and communication require coordinated planning and response under big events. Because of their ephemeral nature, big special events, such as Olympic games, inaugurations, large sporting events, or disasters earthquakes, fires, hurricanes, oil spills, and so on , use existing and sometimes upgraded and new infrastructure that has not been conceived to absorb the intense and highly polarized usage generated by such events. Big events deal with a diversity of “exceptional” situations, the impact of which depends on their magnitude, predictability, location, and regularity, among other factors, and places enormous strain on most parts of infrastructure systems, including transportation, telecommunications, power distribution, Internet, waste generation and collection, etc. By focusing on better strategic planning and development and robust design, communities, decision makers, and individuals can make more effective use of existing infrastructure, as well as better planning and design of planned infrastructure, reduce adverse impacts, share information, better utilize technology, and strengthen responsibility and lines of communication.

Trotz allem zeichnen sie: Der Spanische Bürgerkrieg mit Kinderaugen gesehen

Seventy years after the insurrection of Spanish military forces against the democratically elected government of the Second Republic, several political, cultural and scientific initiatives have set out to reinforce the historical memory of the Spanish Civil War. An objective historical debate about the war was impossible in Spain under the Franco regime and quite difficult during the transition period to a democratic state because of the ongoing conflict between Francoists and democrats, which led to an attempted military coup against the new Spanish democracy in 1981. The stable democracy Spain now enjoys allows us to revisit the history of the Civil War from a republican and democratic point of view, in order finally to offer a just remembrance of the war’s victims on the Republican side, something which has been neglected for decades. This paper explores the representation of the Spanish Civil War in children’s drawings, which were collected by several institutions, among them the Biblioteca Nacional de España. The existence and preservation of these drawings is the result of unique circumstances. The Spanish Civil War was the first conflict in which modern arms were intentionally used against the civil population on a large scale, so that children became eyewitnesses of military attacks. The government of the Republic organised the evacuation of the civilian population, especially children, from the war zones, using an existing system of school colonies. Guided by their educators, these children started to reflect on their new experiences – the bombardments, the evacuation, the separation from their parents, but also the games, lessons and other activities in the school colonies – in their drawings. These drawings had a double purpose. On the one hand, they were designed as a therapeutic measure to help the children to overcome the traumas produced by the war. On the other hand, these drawings were used as propaganda in order to convince the Western democracies to support the legitimate Spanish government and to stop their policy of non‐intervention, which only favoured the military rebels and their supporters, National‐socialist Germany and Fascist Italy. Today, the children’s drawings of the Spanish Civil War represent a valuable and direct testimony of different aspects of this conflict: life before the war, the breakdown of the Lebenswelt of the children, the presence of the war in daily life, humanitarian support and evacuation, organisation and life in the school colonies and the politicisation of the children. Nowadays, children who suffer the horrors of war continue to draw their experiences. The only difference with the drawings of the children of the Spanish Civil War is that today there is more blood, weapons are more powerful, and society is indifferent and has become accustomed to coexisting with injustice.

Public Response to Wildfire: Is the Australian “Stay and Defend or Leave Early” Approach an Option for Wildfire Management in the United States?

Abstract In the United States, the increasing costs and negative impacts of wildfires are causing fire managers and policymakers to reexamine traditional approaches to fire management including whether mass evacuation of populations threatened by wildfire is always the most appropriate option. This article examines the Australian “stay and defend or leave early” (SDLE) approach (which is not inherently the same as shelter in place) and the contextual factors that may make it more or less appropriate in the United States. We first discuss what SDLE actually entails and then examine four contextual areas that could influence how appropriate the approach might be in the United States: nature of fire risk, agency roles and responsibilities, education and shared responsibility, and human dimensions and decisionmaking. Although some contextual differences may mean that there are US locations where the approach would be inappropriate, they are not systematic enough to mean that the approach would not be viable in many localities. However, significant groundwork would need to be laid to ensure success.

Evolving Need for Alternative Triage Management in Public Health Emergencies: A Hurricane Katrina Case Study

In many countries, traditional medical planning for disasters developed largely in response to battlefield and multiple casualty incidents, generally involving corporal injuries. The mass evacuation of a metropolitan population in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina evolved into life-and-death triage scenarios involving thousands of patients with nontraumatic illnesses and special medical needs. Although unprecedented in the United States, triage management needs for this disaster were similar to other large-scale public health emergencies, both natural and human-generated, that occurred globally in the past half-century. The need for alternative triage-management processes similar to the methodologies of other global mass public health emergencies is illustrated through the experience of disaster medical assistance teams in the first 3 days following Katrina's landfall. The immediate establishment of disaster-specific, consensus-based, public health emergency-related triage protocols-developed with ethical and legal expertise and a renewed focus on multidimensional, multifactorial matrix decision-making processes-is strongly recommended.

Population Evacuations in Industrial Accidents: A Review of the Literature about Four Major Events

This article reviews the literature describing four chemical and nuclear accidents and the lessons learned from each regarding the evacuation of civilian populations. Evacuation may save lives however, if poorly orchestrated, it may cause serious problems. For example, an inaccurate assessment of danger may lead to the evacuation of the same population twice, as the area requiring evacuation becomes larger than originally expected. Evacuation programs should focus on the vulnerable components of the populations, such as the elderly, children, and the disabled, and also should include plans for the care of pets and other animals. Training programs for civilians living near industrial centers and other high-risk areas should be considered. Finally, pre-event planning and preparation can improve the evacuation process and prevent panic behavior, and thus result in fewer casualties.

Review of A Real Multi-story Store Fire by Applying Evacuation and Smoke Movement Interactive Simulation Model

The evacuation and smoke movement interactive simulation model has been developed to handle the evacuation of large populations of individuals with mixed walking capabilities. The advantages of the model are: 1) to handle evacuation of individual evacuees considering variety of behavioral parameters, 2) to handle total evacuation in a multi-story building via the stairs, and 3) to consider interactions between egress behavior and spread of smoke in a building. The system is a deterministic simulation program implemented by the agent-based computer language, Repast. Using this simulation model, we conducted case studies to reproduce the smoke condition and evacuation situation of a real fatal fire of the 1990 Nagasakiya-Amagasaki Store Fire as accurately as possible reflecting the facts from the survey. The calculated results of case studies well agreed with the investigated pattern of risk in evacuation behavior linked with the smoke impacts by the model. We also demonstrated that our simulation model is useful enough to examine possible changes of consequences according to different egress scenarios in order to find possible future issues and solutions for the problems regarding the total evacuation in a multi-story building.