The MATSim Network Flow Model for Traffic Simulation Adapted to Large-Scale Emergency Egress and an Application to the Evacuation of the Indonesian City of Padang in Case of a Tsunami Warning

The evacuation of whole cities or even regions is an important problem, as demonstrated by recent events such as evacuation of Houston in the case of Hurricane Rita or the evacuation of coastal cities in the case of Tsunamis. This paper describes a complex evacuation simulation framework for the city of Pandang, with approximately 1,000,000 inhabitants. Padang faces a high risk of being inundated by a tsunami wave. The evacuation simulation is based on the MATSim framework for large-scale transport simulations. Different optimization parameters like evacuation distance, evacuation time, or the variation of the advance warning time are investigated. The results are given as overall evacuation times, evacuation curves, an detailed GIS analysis of the evacuation directions. All these results are discussed with regard to their usability for evacuation recommendations.BMBF, 03G0666E, Verbundprojekt FW: Last-mile Evacuation; Vorhaben: Evakuierungsanalyse und Verkehrsoptimierung, Evakuierungsplan einer Stadt - Sonderprogramm GEOTECHNOLOGIENBMBF, 03NAPAI4, Transport und Verkehr: Verbundprojekt ADVEST: Adaptive Verkehrssteuerung; Teilprojekt Verkehrsplanung und Verkehrssteuerung in Megacitie

An Integrated Agent-Based Microsimulation Model for Hurricane Evacuation in New Orleans

Mass evacuation of urban areas due to hurricanes is a critical problem that requires extensive basic and applied research. Knowing the accurate evacuation time needed for the entire region in advance such that the evacuation order can be issued on a timely basis is crucial for the officials. Microsimulation modeling, which focuses on the characteristics of individual motorists and travel behavior, has been used widely in traffic simulation as it can lead to the most accurate result. However, because detailed driver response modeling and path processing must be incorporated, vehicle-based microscopic models have always been used only to simulate small to medium sized urban areas. Few studies have attempted to address problems associated with mass evacuations using vehicle-based microsimulation at a regional scale. This study develops an integrated two-level approach by separating the entire road network of the study area into two components, highways (i.e., interstate highways and causeways) and local roads. A vehicle-based microsimulation model was used to simulate the highway part of the road traffic, whereas the local part of the road traffic simulation utilized an agent-based model. The integrated microsimulation model was used to simulate hurricane evacuation in New Orleans. Validation results confirm that the proposed model performs well in terms of high model accuracy (i.e., close agreement between the real and simulated traffic patterns) and short model running time. Sufficient evacuation time is a premise to protect people’s life safety when an area is threatened by a deadly disaster. To decrease the network clearance time, this study also examined the effectiveness of three evacuation strategies for disaster evacuation, including a) simultaneous evacuation strategy, b) staged evacuation strategy based on spatial vulnerabilities, and c) staged evacuation strategy based on social vulnerabilities. The simulation results showed that both staged evacuation strategies can decrease the network clearance time over the simultaneous evacuation strategy. Specifically, the spatial vulnerability-based staged evacuation strategy can decrease the overall network clearance time by about four hours, while the social vulnerability-based staged evacuation strategy can decrease the network clearance time by about 2.5 hours

Modelling the impact of wildfire smoke on driving speed

Traffic models can be used to study evacuation scenarios during wildland-urban interface fires and identify the ability of a community to reach a safe place. In those scenarios, wildfire smoke can reduce visibility conditions on the road. This can have serious implications on the evacuation effectiveness since drivers would reduce their speed in relation to the optical density on the road. To date, there is no traffic model which explicitly represents the impact of reduced visibility conditions on traffic evacuation flow. This paper makes use of an experimental dataset collected in a virtual reality environment to calibrate two widely used macroscopic traffic models (the Lighthill-Whitham-Richards and the Van Aerde models) in order to account for the impact of reduced visibility conditions on driving speed. An application of the calibrated traffic model considering the impact of smoke has been performed using the WUI-NITY platform, an open multi-physics platform which includes wildfire spread, pedestrian response and traffic modelling. A dedicated verification test has been developed and performed considering different values of optical densities of smoke and traffic densities to ensure the model has been implemented correctly in WUI-NITY. A case study that demonstrates the applicability of the model to real life scenarios was also implemented, based on data from an evacuation drill. This paper shows that the presence of smoke on the road can significantly decrease movement speed and increase evacuation times thus highlighting the need for inclusion of this factor in traffic evacuation models applied for wildland-urban interface fire scenarios

Applying the lessons of the attack on the World Trade Center, 11th September 2001, to the design and use of interactive evacuation simulations

The collapse of buildings, such as terminal 2E at Paris' Charles de Gaule Airport, and of fires, such as the Rhode Island, Station Night Club tragedy, has focused public attention on the safety of large public buildings. Initiatives in the United States and in Europe have led to the development of interactive simulators that model evacuation from these buildings. The tools avoid some of the ethical and legal problems from simulating evacuations; many people were injured during the 1993 evacuation of the World Trade Center (WTC) complex. They also use many concepts that originate within the CHI communities. For instance, some simulators use simple task models to represent the occupants' goal structures as they search for an available exit. However, the recent release of the report from the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States (the '9/11 commission') has posed serious questions about the design and use of this particular class of interactive systems. This paper argues that simulation research needs to draw on insights from the CHI communities in order to meet some the challenges identified by the 9/11 commission

Lessons from the evacuation of the World Trade Center, Sept 11th 2001 for the future development of computer simulations

This paper provides an overview of the state of the art in evacuation simulations. These interactive computer based tools have been developed to help the owners and designers of large public buildings to assess the risks that occupants might face during emergency egress. The development of the Glasgow Evacuation Simulator is used to illustrate the existing generation of tools. This system uses Monte Carlo techniques to control individual and group movements during an evacuation. The end-user can interactively open and block emergency exits at any point. It is also possible to alter the priorities that individuals associate with particular exit routes. A final benefit is that the tool can derive evacuation simulations directly from existing architects models; this reduces the cost of simulations and creates a more prominent role for these tools in the iterative development of large-scale public buildings. Empirical studies have been used to validate the GES system as a tool to support evacuation training. The development of these tools has been informed by numerous human factors studies and by recent accident investigations. For example, the 2003 fire in the Station nightclub in Rhode Island illustrated the way in which most building occupants retrace their steps to an entrance even when there are alternate fire exits. The second half of this paper uses this introduction to criticise the existing state of the art in evacuation simulations. These criticisms are based on a detailed study of the recent findings from the 9/11 Commission (2004). Ten different lessons are identified. Some relate to the need to better understand the role of building management and security systems in controlling egress from public buildings. Others relate to the human factors involved in coordinating distributed groups of emergency personnel who may be physically exhausted by the demands of an evacuation. Arguably the most important findings centre on the need to model the ingress and egress of emergency personnel from these structures. The previous focus of nearly all-existing simulation tools has been on the evacuation of building occupants rather than on the safety of first responders1

EscapeWildFire:Assisting People to Escape Wildfires in Real-Time

Over the past couple of decades, the number of wildfires and area of land burned around the world has been steadily increasing, partly due to climatic changes and global warming. Therefore, there is a high probability that more people will be exposed to and endangered by forest fires. Hence there is an urgent need to design pervasive systems that effectively assist people and guide them to safety during wildfires. This paper presents EscapeWildFire, a mobile application connected to a backend system which models and predicts wildfire geographical progression, assisting citizens to escape wildfires in real-time. A small pilot indicates the correctness of the system. The code is open-source; fire authorities around the world are encouraged to adopt this approach

The representation and implementation of time-dependent inundation in large-scale microscopic evacuation simulations

Multi-agent simulation has increasingly been used for transportation simulation in recent years. With current techniques, it is possible to simulate systems consisting of several million agents. Such multi-agent simulations have been applied to whole cities and even large regions. In this paper it is demonstrated how to adapt an existing multi-agent transportation simulation framework to large-scale pedestrian evacuation simulation. The underlying flow model simulates the traffic-based on a simple queue model where only free speed, bottleneck capacities, and space constraints are taken into account. The queue simulation, albeit simple, captures the most important aspects of evacuations such as the congestion effects of bottlenecks and the time needed to evacuate the endangered area. In the case of an evacuation simulation the network has time-dependent attributes. For instance, large-scale inundations or conflagrations do not cover all the endangered area at once. These time-dependent attributes are modeled as network change events. Network change events are modifying link parameters at predefined points in time. The simulation framework is demonstrated through a case study for the Indonesian city of Padang, which faces a high risk of being inundated by a tsunami.BMBF, 03G0666E, Verbundprojekt FW: Last-mile Evacuation; Vorhaben: Evakuierungsanalyse und Verkehrsoptimierung, Evakuierungsplan einer Stadt - Sonderprogramm GEOTECHNOLOGIENBMBF, 03NAPAI4, Transport und Verkehr: Verbundprojekt ADVEST: Adaptive Verkehrssteuerung; Teilprojekt Verkehrsplanung und Verkehrssteuerung in Megacitie

An operational research-based integrated approach for mass evacuation planning of a city

Large-scale disasters are constantly occurring around the world, and in many cases evacuation of regions of city is needed. ‘Operational Research/Management Science’ (OR/MS) has been widely used in emergency planning for over five decades. Warning dissemination, evacuee transportation and shelter management are three ‘Evacuation Support Functions’ (ESF) generic to many hazards. This thesis has adopted a case study approach to illustrate the importance of integrated approach of evacuation planning and particularly the role of OR/MS models. In the warning dissemination phase, uncertainty in the household’s behaviour as ‘warning informants’ has been investigated along with uncertainties in the warning system. An agentbased model (ABM) was developed for ESF-1 with households as agents and ‘warning informants’ behaviour as the agent behaviour. The model was used to study warning dissemination effectiveness under various conditions of the official channel. In the transportation phase, uncertainties in the household’s behaviour such as departure time (a function of ESF-1), means of transport and destination have been. Households could evacuate as pedestrians, using car or evacuation buses. An ABM was developed to study the evacuation performance (measured in evacuation travel time). In this thesis, a holistic approach for planning the public evacuation shelters called ‘Shelter Information Management System’ (SIMS) has been developed. A generic allocation framework of was developed to available shelter capacity to the shelter demand by considering the evacuation travel time. This was formulated using integer programming. In the sheltering phase, the uncertainty in household shelter choices (either nearest/allocated/convenient) has been studied for its impact on allocation policies using sensitivity analyses. Using analyses from the models and detailed examination of household states from ‘warning to safety’, it was found that the three ESFs though sequential in time, however have lot of interdependencies from the perspective of evacuation planning. This thesis has illustrated an OR/MS based integrated approach including and beyond single ESF preparedness. The developed approach will help in understanding the inter-linkages of the three evacuation phases and preparing a multi-agency-based evacuation planning evacuatio

e-Sanctuary: open multi-physics framework for modelling wildfire urban evacuation

The number of evacuees worldwide during wildfire keep rising, year after year. Fire evacuations at the wildland-urban interfaces (WUI) pose a serious challenge to fire and emergency services and are a global issue affecting thousands of communities around the world. But to date, there is a lack of comprehensive tools able to inform, train or aid the evacuation response and the decision making in case of wildfire. The present work describes a novel framework for modelling wildfire urban evacuations. The framework is based on multi-physics simulations that can quantify the evacuation performance. The work argues that an integrated approached requires considering and integrating all three important components of WUI evacuation, namely: fire spread, pedestrian movement, and traffic movement. The report includes a systematic review of each model component, and the key features needed for the integration into a comprehensive toolkit

Route Guidance Map for Emergency Evacuation

An efficient process of emergency evacuation must be guided. In the event of an evacuation instruction, a significant amount of time is spent by evacuees looking for a place of relative safety or an exit. Due to the ensuing stress and confusion evacuees try to follow others, consequently, all the exits are not used effectively. Therefore, it is important to develop a route guidance map for the emergency. The focus of the map is to help both, the evacuees and the authorities to perform evacuation efficiently. This paper presents a route guidance map for pedestrians that aims an efficient evacuation in case of an emergency. An agent-based simulation framework is used for the simulation of various scenarios to prepare the guiding map. A real world case study of Sarojini Nagar, Delhi is presented to test the presented methodology. Eventually, several strategic recommendations are provided for improving safety of existing infrastructure