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.

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.

"TRB's Transportation Research Record (TRR): Journal of the Transportation Research Board (TRR), No. 2459: Critical infrastructure, emergency Evacuation, and logistics of disaster recovery 2014 summarizes ways to plan post-disaster operations in a highway network; a model for investigating traffic incident impacts on evacuation times in large-scale emergencies; an approach for assessing climate change vulnerabilities in transportation infrastructure; and a cost assessment of highway bridge networks subjected to extreme seismic events. This TRR also explores mobility benefits of intermediate crossovers on contraflow facilities during hurricane evacuation; mathematical modeling of command-and-control strategies in crowd movement; a network flow solution method for optimal evacuation traffic routing and signal control with nonuniform threats; a simulation study of evacuation routes and traffic management strategies in short-notice emergency evacuation; and accessibility of low-income populations to safe zones during localized evacuations. In addition, this TRR examines an efficient negative cycle-canceling algorithm for finding the optimal traffic routing for network evacuation with nonuniform threats; modeling and assessment of crossing elimination for no-notice evacuations; effects of phased evacuations on highway networks in megaregions; use of social media data to explore crisis informatics; use of mobile LiDAR data to assess hurricane damage and visualize community vulnerability; and experiences and lessons learned with urban ferries and catastrophic floods." -- Publisher's description

No-notice evacuations of metropolitan areas can place significant demands on transportation infrastructure. In preparation, emergency managers and transportation engineers study potential demands and many create evacuation traffic management plans. The findings from a St. Louis Metro East evacuation study revealed some problematic areas of the transportation network. At these locations the traffic backed up during a simulated evacuation, caused a significant amount of delay, and increased the evacuation clearance time. An emerging paradigm called Connected Vehicle (CV) technology can provide real-time communication between vehicles in a traffic stream. The objectives of this research were to evaluate the impacts of CVs on evacuation from a downtown metropolitan area. The microsimulation software VISSIM was used to model the roadway network and the evacuation traffic. The model was built, calibrated and validated for studying the performance of traffic during the evacuation. This model helped researchers to find the time required to evacuate people in this area for different disaster scenarios. Because it is unlikely that vehicles equipped with CV technologies will become commonplace soon, the researcher tested different levels of deployment, also known as penetration rate. This study included penetration rates from 0 to 30 percent CVs; evaluating the average speed, average and total delays. The findings suggest significant reductions in total delays when CVs reached a penetration rate of 30 percent or greater. Results showed that the presence of CVs at a penetration rate of 30 percent could reduce the overall traffic delay by 60 percent over the evacuation period. A sensitivity analysis was conducted and the finding showed that a 10 percent increase in the penetration rate will significantly improve traffic flow. The findings of this study suggest that the communication capabilities of CVs can reduce delays and improve the traffic flow rate during a no-notice evacuation. Additionally, the benefits could be greater for evacuations with higher volumes, evacuations that last longer, and evacuations with higher proportions of CVs in the vehicle stream.

From driverless cars to vehicular networks, recent technological advances are being employed to increase road safety and improve driver satisfaction. As with any newly developed technology, researchers must take care to address all concerns, limitations, and dangers before widespread public adoption. Transportation Systems and Engineering: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications addresses current trends in transportation technologies, such as smart cars, green technologies, and infrastructure development. This multivolume book is a critical reference source for engineers, computer scientists, transportation authorities, students, and practitioners in the field of transportation systems management.

Transportation systems serve important roles during emergencies, in particular for evacuations. However, efficient travel during these life-and-death scenarios can be adversely impacted by external conditions, such as unnecessary and unneeded travel. This research sought to enhance the understanding of the effects of these conditions by analyzing shadow evacuations, and their impact on regional traffic operations in megaregions, more broadly. The research was based on simulations of a range of hurricane evacuation threat scenarios in the Gulf of Mexico building upon prior study using TRANSIMS. These assessments are also targeted at what many assume could be worst-case evacuation conditions and pushing the limits of current simulation modeling capability. Among the broader findings of this work was that shadow evacuation participation rates did not significantly impact the evacuation clearance times within mandatory evacuation areas of the megaregion as long as demand could be temporarily spread out. This finding does not, however, suggest that the shadow evacuations have no impact on evacuation processes. High rates of shadow evacuees can cause significant congestion if they are not able to exit critical routes before mandatory evacuees reach areas further away from the coast.

In response to both natural and man-made disasters, more and more emergency evacuations plans have been put forward and consistently aims to move a large disaster affected population through a highway network towards safer areas as quickly and efficiently as possible. The objectives of this study are 1) to verify the feasibility of applying the DYNASMART-P model to simulations 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 evaluate the effects of possible traffic management strategies on a large scale evacuation of people under emergency conditions on highway network in the Greater Jackson area.

Since emergencies including both natural disasters and man-made incidents, are happening more and more frequently, evacuation, especially transportation evacuation, is becoming a hot research focus in recent years. Currently, transportation evacuation study focuses on evacuating people and property from large areas and does not address the problem of transportation evacuation in a small and dense area. This research is intended to identify the study framework of developing transportation evacuation plans in small and dense areas. Texas Medical Center (TMC), Houston, Texas, is selected as case study in this thesis. Incidents are assumed based on potential threats. Traffic information is collected through filed data collections in the TMC area, and evacuation scenarios with incidents and management improvements are coded and simulated in VISSIM, a microscopic traffic simulation model. Genetic Algorithm is one of the calibration methods for searching multiple parameters at the same time and is used in this thesis to calibrate parameters of driving behaviors in VISSIM by using field collected and simulation data. Based on the simulation results, potential improvements and measurement of effectiveness (MOE) of operations such as Reversed Lane (RL) and In-bound Shuttle (IS) are analyzed and evaluated. Simulation results show that the evacuation would be much more efficient if appropriate operational strategies are implemented. Proper management improvements such as Reversed Lane and In-bound Shuttle could greatly maximize the number of persons/vehicles evacuated in the area. The selected operational plan can efficiently evacuate all persons in the Texas Medical Center in suitable simulation scenario under a given incident assumption. The framework of developing transportation evacuation plan is tested and proven to be effective in the Texas Medical Center. The microscopic simulation based study process is targeted on small and dense areas and it can be used in any other similar areas. It is recommended that further work be conducted to form a comprehensive evacuation plan.