Large-Scale Evacuation introduces the reader to the steps involved in evacuation modelling for towns and cities, from understanding the hazards that can require large-scale evacuations, through understanding how local officials decide to issue evacuation advisories and households decide whether to comply, to transportation simulation and traffic management strategies. The author team has been recognized internationally for their research and consulting experience in the field of evacuations. Collectively, they have 125 years of experience in evacuation, including more than 140 projects for federal and state agencies. The text explains how to model evacuations that use the road transportation network by combining perspectives from social scientists and transportation engineers, fields that have commonly approached evacuation modelling from distinctly different perspectives. In doing so, it offers a step-by-step guide through the key questions needed to model an evacuation and its impacts to the evacuation route system as well as evacuation management strategies for influencing demand and expanding capacity. The authors also demonstrate how to simulate the resulting traffic and evacuation management strategies that can be used to facilitate evacuee movement and reduce unnecessary demand. Case studies, which identify key points to analyze in an evacuation plan, discuss evacuation termination and re-entry, and highlight challenges that someone developing an evacuation plan or model should expect, are also included. This textbook will be of interest to researchers, practitioners, and advanced students.

Hurricanes are one of the most catastrophic events resulting in severe consequences including loss of life and property damage. Emergency management teams play a huge role in safeguarding the lives of people in endangered areas by evacuating them to safer locations as efficiently as possible. This study was undertaken to evaluate the traffic control plan (TCP), for the Hampton Roads region of Virginia, and the performance of the designated evacuation routes using large-scale traffic simulation models. Road network was coded in a state-of the- art microscopic simulation program, VISSIM. The emergency evacuation plan for the study area was evaluated by simulating the various evacuation scenarios as described in the abbreviated transportation model (ATM) for Hampton Roads region. The study area comprised of the following nine evacuation areas - cities of Virginia Beach, Norfolk, Chesapeake, Portsmouth, Suffolk, Hampton, Newport News, Poquoson, and York. The following objectives were achieved in this research - 1) estimated the traffic performance of evacuation routes and other major arterial streets, 2) located the major bottlenecks, congestion, or other operational difficulties in the areas covered by the network, 3) estimated the total network evacuation time, 4) conducted what-if scenarios (e.g., incident occurrences), and 5) recommended amendments to the TCP to improve the traffic performance.

In response to both natural and man-made disasters, more and more emergency evacuation plans have been put forward and consistently aims to move a large disaster affected population through a multimodal transportation network towards safer areas as quickly and efficiently as possible. The objectives of this paper are 1) to verify the feasibility of applying the DYNASMART-P model to simulation of traffic characteristics in both normal and emergency conditions for the urban transportation system in the Greater Jackson metropolitan area in Mississippi and 2) to develop and evaluate emergency evacuation strategies for a large scale evacuation of people under emergency conditions in the Greater Jackson area. In this paper, traffic network including Hinds, Madison and Rankin was built through the mesoscopic traffic-network planning and simulation model DYNASMART-P based on the dynamic traffic assignment methodology, and applied the model to a highway network on the route of the evacuation. The background OD demand as input for the simulation program was calibrated using observed traffic volume data collected in several critical routes of evacuation. An evacuation scenario was designed to study the impacts of the evacuating traffic from southeastern Louisiana to the Greater Jackson Metropolitan Area of Mississippi due to an assumed approaching hurricane disaster. Critically congested freeway segments under two evacuation intensity levels were identified based on the criterion of the average queue length percentage and level of service. The causes for the congestion of roads were analyzed and explained.

Proper management of evacuation processes is one of the basic requirements within life safety concepts, and it helps to prevent critical situations from getting out of control. Super high-rise buildings, deep underground stations or shopping areas, airplanes for the mass transportation, sport stadiums or meeting places with tens of thousands of visitors-they all call for new dim- sionsinsafeevacuationplanning. Researchresultsinevacuationdynamicsgive answers to these challenges. PED-conferences are the prime address for all research in this ?eld. The increasing number of participants from di'erent ?elds of research re'ect theirimportance. AfterPED-conferencesinGermany(Duisburg,2001), Great Britain (Greenwich, 2003) and Austria (Vienna, 2005), the PED 2008 C- ference in Wuppertal/Germany reached new heights with more than 120 p- ticipants from 20 countries and nearly 100 presentations. The wide ?eld of topics discussed in presentations also re'ects deeper understanding of fun- mental e'ects as well as the stronger interactions between di'erent research areas. New test designs o'er new important basic data, new analysis pro- dures open a better understanding of complex interactions, new model - signs allow more realistic simulations, and the input from architectural - sign and the medical references on physical limitations help to realize a safe evacuation design. On the one hand all these data give an outlook of future possibilities and sometimes they open an astonishing new understanding of seemingly well-known data. On the other hand, they make clear the limi- tions of our current knowledge.

Large-scale evacuations from major cities during no-notice events - such as chemical or radiological attacks, hazardous material spills, or earthquakes - have an obvious impact on large regions rather than on just the directly affected area. The scope of impact includes the accommodation of emergency evacuation traffic throughout a very large area; the planning of resources to respond appropriately to the needs of the affected population; the placement of medical supplies and decontamination equipment; and the assessment and determination of primary escape routes, as well as routes for incoming emergency responders. Compared to events with advance notice, such as evacuations based on hurricanes approaching an affected area, the response to no-notice events relies exclusively on pre-planning and general regional emergency preparedness. Another unique issue is the lack of a full and immediate understanding of the underlying threats to the population, making it even more essential to gain extensive knowledge of the available resources, the chain of command, and established procedures. Given the size of the area affected, an advanced understanding of the regional transportation systems is essential to help with the planning for such events. The objectives of the work described here (carried out by Argonne National Laboratory) is the development of a multi-modal regional transportation model that allows for the analysis of different evacuation scenarios and emergency response strategies to build a wealth of knowledge that can be used to develop appropriate regional emergency response plans. The focus of this work is on the effects of no-notice evacuations on the regional transportation network, as well as the response of the transportation network to the sudden and unusual demand. The effects are dynamic in nature, with scenarios changing potentially from minute to minute. The response to a radiological or chemical hazard will be based on the time-delayed dispersion of such materials over a large area, with responders trying to mitigate the immediate danger to the population in a variety of ways that may change over time (e.g., in-place evacuation, staged evacuations, and declarations of growing evacuation zones over time). In addition, available resources will be marshaled in unusual ways, such as the repurposing of transit vehicles to support mass evacuations. Thus, any simulation strategy will need to be able to address highly dynamic effects and will need to be able to handle any mode of ground transportation. Depending on the urgency and timeline of the event, emergency responders may also direct evacuees to leave largely on foot, keeping roadways as clear as possible for emergency responders, logistics, mass transport, and law enforcement. This RTSTEP project developed a regional emergency evacuation modeling tool for the Chicago Metropolitan Area that emergency responders can use to pre-plan evacuation strategies and compare different response strategies on the basis of a rather realistic model of the underlying complex transportation system. This approach is a significant improvement over existing response strategies that are largely based on experience gained from small-scale events, anecdotal evidence, and extrapolation to the scale of the assumed emergency. The new tool will thus add to the toolbox available to emergency response planners to help them design appropriate generalized procedures and strategies that lead to an improved outcome when used during an actual event.

An aging population, increasing obesity and more people with mobility impairments are bringing new challenges to the management of routine and emergency people movement in many countries. These population challenges, coupled with the innovative designs being suggested for both the built environment and other commonly used structures (e.g., transportation systems) and the increasingly complex incident scenarios of fire, terrorism, and large-scale community disasters, provide even greater challenges to population management and safety. Pedestrian and Evacuation Dynamics, an edited volume, is based on the Pedestrian and Evacuation Dynamics (PED) 5th International 2010 conference, March 8th-10th 2010, located at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD, USA. This volume addresses both pedestrian and evacuation dynamics and associated human behavior to provide answers for policy makers, designers, and emergency management to help solve real world problems in this rapidly developing field. Data collection, analysis, and model development of people movement and behavior during nonemergency and emergency situations will be covered as well.

This book highlights cutting-edge research into emergency early warning management and decision-making for severe accidents. Using toxic gas leakages as examples, it puts forward new design methods for emergency early warning systems, as well as a systematic description of emergency early warning information communication mechanisms and characteristics of regional evacuation, based on a wide range of theories, including safety engineering, information engineering, communication, behaviorology and others. The book applies a range of methods, such as case analysis, questionnaire interviews, and multi-objective optimization modeling. Drawing on this basis, it subsequently proposes a multi-objective optimization modeling and algorithm for emergency path selection, together with an evacuation risk assessment method. Divided into six chapters prepared by an international team of researchers, the book addresses the design of early warning systems, communication and dissemination mechanisms of early warning information, characteristics of regional evacuation, multi-objective optimization of emergency paths, and evacuation risk assessment. The book offers an essential reference guide for engineering technicians and researchers in a wide range of fields, including emergency management, safety science and engineering, disaster relief engineering, and transportation optimization, as well as graduate students in related majors at colleges and universities.

Keywords: traffic simulation, emergency evacuation.

We are pleased to welcome readers to this issue of the Journal of Applied Operational Research (JAOR), Volume 7, Number 2. The journal reports on developments in all aspects of operational research, including the latest advances and applications. It is a primarily goal of the journal to focus on and publish practical case studies which illustrate real-life applications.