Download or read book Southeast United States Hurricane Evacuation Traffic Study written by and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Southeast United States Hurricane Evacuation Traffic Study written by United States. Army. Corps of Engineers and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Lower Southeast Florida Hurricane Evacuation Study written by Post, Buckley, Schuh & Jernigan, Inc and published by . This book was released on 1983 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Background: the lower southeast Florida region, comprised of Monroe, Dade, Broward and Palm Beach Counties, has been identified by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration as one of the most hurricane vulnerable areas of the United States. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Jacksonville District, recognizing the need to identify and measure time components critical to the hurricane evacuation process, provided funding through its Flood Plain Management Services Program and leadership to accomplish this study. Funding assistance was also provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Detailed technical study results are provided through this Technical Data Report. Implementation Reports will be developed subsequently by county civil defense officials with the assistance of the Jacksonville District, Corps of Engineers to provide a decision making guide for local county officials. Public information materials will then be developed by the South Florida and Treasure Coast Regional Planning Councils. Major technical work tasks were performed by Post, Buckley, Schuh & Jernigan, Inc. under contract to and under the guidance of, the Jacksonville District, Corps of Engineers.

Download or read book An Operational Analysis of the Hampton Roads Hurricane Evacuation Traffic Control Plan written by Catherine C. McGhee and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 34 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Hampton Roads region of Virginia has developed a hurricane evacuation plan to facilitate the movement of large numbers of vehicles as they attempt to leave the region in advance of a storm. Although the plan considers many aspects of hurricane evacuation, this evaluation focuses on its impacts on traffic operations. A traffic control plan (TCP) was developed that describes the procedures to be followed in the event an evacuation is ordered. Ramps providing access to I-64 are designated as open or closed, and many are metered in an attempt to influence the route choice of evacuees and thereby balance the demand across available evacuation routes. Although considerable work has gone into the development of the TCP, it has not been evaluated from a microscopic perspective to determine the performance characteristics with respect to traffic flow. This study provides that microscopic analysis for the freeway portions of the evacuation routes. The evaluation found that under less severe hurricane conditions (Category 1 or 2), the TCP performs reasonably well under the assumptions made in this study. The most significant assumption made was that all background traffic, including individuals evacuating their homes but remaining within the region, will not use the interstates during the evacuation period. Although background traffic will likely exist, there was insufficient information available in this phase of the study to assign background traffic to the network in any reasonably accurate manner. As the intensity of the hurricane intensifies to a Category 3 or 4, the TCP begins to be less effective. Ramp metering rates, designed in the TCP to ensure free-flowing conditions on the interstate mainlines, result in significant queues at the ramps and back onto the arterial network. Under Category 4 conditions, these queues would likely result in gridlock throughout the arterial network and lead evacuees to search out alternative routes, possibly negatively impacting the performance of those routes as well. The evaluation concludes that lane reversal is warranted under any storm predicted to make landfall as a Category 4 or higher and should be strongly considered for any Category 3. The study further finds that when lane reversal is implemented, the ramp metering rates should be significantly increased to reduce ramp queuing and allow more efficient use of available mainline capacity. The recommendations offered in this report will help to ensure an efficient evacuation of vehicles from the Hampton Roads region, should one be required. The revised ramp metering strategies and guidance on the use of lane reversal will help to maximize the available capacity provided by the interstate routes. Assumptions made throughout the study could render the results uncertain. Background traffic using the interstate routes could add to the congestion reported here. In addition, conditions outside the bounds of the network modeled in this project could negatively impact evacuating vehicles leaving Hampton Roads.

Download or read book Hurricane Evacuation Traffic Analysis and Operational Measures written by Douglas P. Zaragoza and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Intelligent Transportation and Evacuation Planning written by Arab Naser and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-06-09 with total page 121 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Intelligent Transportation and Evacuation Planning: A Modeling-Based Approach provides a new paradigm for evacuation planning strategies and techniques. Recently, evacuation planning and modeling have increasingly attracted interest among researchers as well as government officials. This interest stems from the recent catastrophic hurricanes and weather-related events that occurred in the southeastern United States (Hurricane Katrina and Rita). The evacuation methods that were in place before and during the hurricanes did not work well and resulted in thousands of deaths. This book offers insights into the methods and techniques that allow for implementing mathematical-based, simulation-based, and integrated optimization and simulation-based engineering approaches for evacuation planning.

Download or read book Modeling Hurricane Evacuation Traffic written by Haoqiang Fu and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Little attention has been given to estimating dynamic travel demand in transportation planning in the past. However, when factors influencing travel are changing significantly over time - such as with an approaching hurricane - dynamic demand and the resulting variation in traffic flow on the network become important. In this study, dynamic travel demand models for hurricane evacuation were developed with two methodologies: survival analysis and sequential choice model. Using survival analysis, the time before evacuation from a pending hurricane is modeled with those that do not evacuate considered as censored observations. A Cox proportional hazards regression model with time-dependent variables and a Piecewise Exponential model were estimated. In the sequential choice model, the decision to evacuate in the face of an oncoming hurricane is considered as a series of binary choices over time. A sequential logit model and a sequential complementary log-log model were developed. Each model is capable of predicting the probability of a household evacuating at each time period before hurricane landfall as a function of the household's socio-economic characteristics, the characteristics of the hurricane (such as distance to the storm), and policy decisions (such as the issuing of evacuation orders). Three datasets were used in this study. They were data from southwest Louisiana collected following Hurricane Andrew, data from South Carolina collected following Hurricane Floyd, and stated preference survey data collected from the New Orleans area. Based on the analysis, the sequential logit model was found to be the best alternative for modeling dynamic travel demand for hurricane evacuation. The sequential logit model produces predictions which are superior to those of the current evacuation participation rate models with response curves. Transfer of the sequential logit model estimated on the Floyd data to the Andrew data demonstrated that the sequential logit model is capable of estimating dynamic travel demand in a different environment than the one in which it was estimated with reasonable accuracy. However, more study is required on the transferability of models of this type, as well as the development of procedures that would allow the updating of transferred model parameters to better reflect local evacuation behavior.

Download or read book Development of a Large scale Traffic Simulation Model for Hurricane Evacuation written by Siddharth Sharma and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Large Scale Evacuation written by Michael K. Lindell and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2018-12-07 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Lower Southeast Florida Hurricane Evacuation Study written by United States. Army. Corps of Engineers and published by . This book was released on 1991 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book A Comparative Analysis of Hurricane Evacuation Traffic Conditions Using Static and Dynamic Traffic Assignments written by Santosh K. Andem and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Hurricane Evacuation Traffic Analysis and Operational Measures Interim Technical Report written by Douglas P. Zaragoza and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 122 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Transportation s Role in Emergency Evacuation and Reentry written by Paul Brian Wolshon and published by Transportation Research Board. This book was released on 2009 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "TRB's National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Synthesis 392: Transportation's Role in Emergency Evacuation and Reentry explores information on transportation's role in emergency evacuation and reentry by summarizing aspects of its planning, control, and research as well as highlighting effective and innovative practices"--Publisher's description.

Download or read book Modeling Hurricane Evacuation Traffic written by Chester G. Wilmot and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The test was conducted by estimating the models on a portion of evacuation data from South Carolina following Hurricane Floyd, and then observing how well the models reproduced destination choice at the county level on the remaining data. The tests showed the models predicted destination choice on the remaining data with similar accuracy. The Gravity Model predicted evacuation to friends or relatives in 110 different counties with an average error of 1.55 evacuations over all destinations, while the corresponding error for the IOM was 1.64. For evacuation to hotels or motels in 70 different counties, the Gravity Model gave an average error of 1.48 evacuations and the IOM an average error of 1.50. However, when the IOM was modified to make the sequencing of opportunities sensitive to the direction of evacuation relative to the path of the storm, the modified IOM performed slightly better than the Gravity Model with average errors of 1.55 and 1.43 evacuations to friends and relatives, and motels and hotels, respectively. The transferability of the Gravity Model for evacuations to friends and relatives was also tested in this study by applying the model estimated on the Hurricane Floyd data in South Carolina to data from Hurricane Andrew in Louisiana. Transferability was tested by comparing the trip length frequency distributions from the two data sets, the similarity of friction factors from models estimated on each data set, and the ratio of the Root-Mean Square-Error (RMSE) of destination predictions of a locally-estimated model to a transferred model on the Andrew data. No significant statistical difference was found between the trip length frequency diagrams or the sets of friction factors at the 95 percent level of significance. The ratio of RMSEs on the Andrew data was 0.67, indicating that the average error of a locally-estimated model was 67 percent that of the transferred model.

Download or read book Hurricane Evacuation Modeling written by Lei Fang (Engineer) and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 119 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hurricane evacuation has attracted renewed emphasis since hurricane Katrina in 2005. Every coastal state is establishing their evacuation guidelines and searching new methods to improve evacuations. In this dissertation, first, hurricane evacuation of the Hampton Roads region of Virginia is investigated using large-scale regional mesoscopic traffic simulation models. Fourteen evacuation scenarios consisting of various combinations of storm categories and traffic control strategies are evaluated. The evaluation of scenarios provided information on the clearance time, average travel times, bottleneck locations, and congestion durations. The major findings from scenario evaluations include: (1) The differences in participation rates (100% versus 70%) did not impact the clearance times in a Category 1 storm evacuation, but have significant impact in a Category 3 storm evacuation, (2) The status (open or close) of a critical tunnel crossing, the Monitor-Merrimac Memorial Bridge-Tunnel did not have impact on the evacuation performance in Category 1 and 2 storm. However, opening the tunnel would improve the performance in a Category 3 storm, (3) The clearance times derived from simulations can be used to determine when to issue evacuation orders for various storm intensities, and (4) The bottleneck locations and durations identified for each evacuation scenario can be used to allocate the limited traffic monitoring equipment during an evacuation. The second focus of this dissertation is to investigate the impact of assumptions made regarding evacuee route choice on evacuation performance estimates. In the hurricane evacuation literature, very few studies have documented the realistic route choice behavior of evacuees during a hurricane. Due to this lack of realistic route choice behavior data, modelers make assumptions about the route choice behavior and traffic assignment. User-equilibrium traffic assignment has been extensively used in past evacuation studies. In this dissertation, realistic route choice behavior was determined by evaluating findings of a few published studies. The impact of route choice behavior on evacuation performance, especially travel times, is then investigated using the regional simulation model of the Hampton Roads region. The analysis found that the user-equilibrium traffic assignment significantly underestimates the travel times during an evacuation. The extent of underestimation of evacuation travel times depends on the total evacuation demand (a function of storm intensity), and the percent of evacuees willing to use en-route information to seek alternate routes when facing congestion. For the three en-route percentages reported in the literature i.e., 30%, 50%, and 70%, the UE travel times were 58%, 42%, and 33% lower than actual travel times realized in a Category 1; 94%, 71%, and 57% lower in a Category 2; and 90%, 69%, and 54% lower in a Category 3 evacuation. These findings illustrate the need to collect real-world data on evacuee route choice in order to build accurate evacuation models. The third focus of dissertation is to propose a procedure to assess the benefit of adding additional intermediate crossovers on a contra flow facility. Contra flow operation in which the direction of traffic on one or more travel lanes is reversed in order to increase the capacity of a road network is becoming a critical component of the evacuation plans of coastal states. Several coastal states have a contra flow plan in place for evacuation, however only a few states have intermediate crossovers between the origin and termination points. The impact of intermediate crossovers on network performance has not been well investigated in previous research. This dissertation investigates the benefits of having intermediate crossovers between regular and contra flow lanes. Based on the investigation, it can be concluded that adding intermediate crossovers did improve network performance for medium and high evacuation demand situations. Adding intermediate crossovers for low demand situations did not improve the network performance and thus any considerations for intermediate crossovers for the low demand evacuations must be based solely on providing access to road-side services (gas, food, and others). For high and medium demand situations and for the road network studied in this section, a 28% improvement in the average travel time was observed by deploying four intermediate crossovers out of the 44 potential crossover locations. The iterative elimination procedure proposed in this dissertation is the first attempt in the literature to provide a systematic approach to determine the critical intermediate crossover locations within reasonable computation times.

Download or read book Use and Comparison of Traffic Simulation Models in the Analysis of Emergency Evacuation Conditions written by and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The evacuation of vulnerable coastal areas in the event of an emergency such as an impending hurricane has become a significant safety issue due to the rapid growth of both permanent and tourist populations in these areas. Highway capacity has often not been upgraded in line with this demand growth. In the case of Hurricane Floyd in 1999, evacuations of areas of North and South Carolina resulted in several highly congested primary highways and, as a result, several states created Lane Reversal Plans for interstates and/or divided highways along evacuation routes. However, these plans were created with little data to rely on as to their efficiency. A major research study was funded by the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) to use simulation modeling to investigate the effects of the Interstate 40 Lane Reversal Plan on the evacuation of Wilmington and New Hanover County, North Carolina. In addition to the analysis of the effects of lane reversal, a side-by-side comparison of the CORSIM and VISSIM simulation models was performed on the highway network based on demand estimates provided by a demand study performed for the United States Army Corps of Engineers and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Analysis using CORSIM and VISSIM showed lane reversal to provide considerable capacity increases to traffic attempting to exit New Hanover County via Interstate 40, which had significantly increased throughput and decreased queues within New Hanover County in the event of large-scale evacuations.

Download or read book Transportation Security Against Terrorism written by Mete Tahmisoğlu and published by IOS Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Even a cursory review of the numerous hijacking, train and bus bombings can establish beyond doubt that transport systems are particularly vulnerable targets of terrorist attack. This book intends to offer the groundwork for a theoretical and practical understanding of the issues that surround transportation security against terrorism.