Enhancing pedestrian evacuation routes during flood events

The increasing rate of anthropic activities in flood-prone areas and the effects of climate change are aggravating the dangers posed by floods to people. One of the main reasons for fatality during flood events is walking through floodwaters. Although authorities strongly advise against walking in flood waters, evacuations or the accessing of flooded areas by emergency services might be necessary. This research proposes a novel approach to increasing resilience by retrofitting existing infrastructures to enhance evacuation and access routes by reducing flood hazard rate based on flood and pedestrian characteristics. The methodology was applied to flash floods in two case studies in the UK, namely Boscastle and Borth, highlighting that retrofitting small regions of the existing roads and pathways to reduce flood hazard can enhance people’s safety during the evacuation, and hence provides a solution to improve the resilience of the existing environment

CLOTHO: a large-scale Internet of Things based crowd evacuation planning system for disaster management

In recent years, different kinds of natural hazards or man-made disasters happened that were diversified and difficult to control with heavy casualties. In this work, we focus on the rapid and systematic evacuation of large-scale densities of people after disasters to reduce loss in an effective manner. The optimal evacuation planning is a key challenge and becomes a hotspot of research and development. We design our system based on an Internet of Things (IoT) scenario that utilizes a mobile Cloud computing platform in order to develop the Crowd Lives Oriented Track and Help Optimizition system (CLOTHO). CLOTHO is an evacuation planning system for large-scale densities of people in disasters. It includes the mobile terminal (IoT side) for data collection and the Cloud backend system for storage and analytics. We build our solution upon a typical IoT/fog disaster management scenario and we propose an IoT application based on an evacuation planning algorithm that uses the Artificial Potential Field (APF), which is the core of CLOTHO. APF is conceptualized as an IoT service, and can determine the direction of evacuation automatically according to the gradient direction of the potential field, suitable for rapid evacuation of large population. People are usually in panic, which easily causes the chaos of evacuation and brings secondary disasters. Based on APF, we propose an evacuation planning algorithm names as Artificial Potential Field with Relationship Attraction (APF-RA). APF-RA guides the evacuees with relationship to move to the same shelter as much as possible, to calm evacuees and realize a more humanitarian evacuation. The experimental results show that CLOTHO (using APF and APF-RA) can effectively improve convergence rate, shorten the evacuation route length and evacuation time, and make the remaining capacity of the surrounding shelters well balanced

Flood modelling and hazard assessment for extreme events in Riverine Basin

Throughout the history of mankind, floods have caused destruction and negatively impacted communities. Recently, effects of climate change and the increasing rate of anthropic activities in flood-prone areas are aggravating the dangers posed by floods to people. Hence, it is crucial to have a better understanding of flood hazard aspects, particularly when considering pedestrians. Indeed, one of the main reasons for fatality during flood events is walking through floodwaters. Although authorities strongly advise against wading in floodwaters, people continue this dangerous behaviour. Alternatively, evacuations or the accessing of flooded areas by emergency services might be necessary. The scope of this research work is to contribute to improving flood hazard assessment and to the design of flood evacuation plans from a pedestrian perspective. To enhance flood hazard assessment a mechanics-based method has been improved by considering effects of terrain slope and updating values of human body characteristics, as well considering body mass index to identify the critical pedestrian category. Different criteria to assess flood hazard have been considered, including the revised mechanics-based approach reported herein. Results from the application of the different criteria to two different case studies, namely Boscastle and Borth, showed that methods based on a full physical analysis, and which also consider human characteristics, give more insight and reliability in assessing flood hazard, especially when considering pedestrians. Results in terms of flood hazard assessments can be used to: i) design evacuation plans; ii) identify hotspots in the study area which will help with prioritisation of the adaption measures; iii) improve resilience of sites prone to flooding and plan more resilient future developments. In this regard this research work proposes a novel approach to increasing flood resilience by retrofitting existing infrastructures to enhance evacuation and access routes by reducing flood hazard rate. Results of the application of this novel methodology to the aforementioned case studies highlighted that retrofitting small portions of the existing roads can enhance iii people’s safety during the evacuation, and hence provide a cost-effective solution to improve the resilience of the existing environment