Influence of demand and capacity in transportation simulations of short-notice, distant-tsunami evacuations
Distant tsunamis require short-notice evacuations in coastal communities to minimize threats to life safety. Given the available time to evacuate and potential distances out of hazard zones, coastal transportation planners and emergency managers can expect large proportions of populations to evacuat...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Elsevier
2020-09-01
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| Series: | Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590198220301226 |
| _version_ | 1818299154573557760 |
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| author | Nathan Wood Kevin Henry Jeff Peters |
| author_facet | Nathan Wood Kevin Henry Jeff Peters |
| author_sort | Nathan Wood |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Distant tsunamis require short-notice evacuations in coastal communities to minimize threats to life safety. Given the available time to evacuate and potential distances out of hazard zones, coastal transportation planners and emergency managers can expect large proportions of populations to evacuate using vehicles. A community-wide, short-notice, distant-tsunami evacuation is challenging because it creates a sudden, significant, and concentrated demand on road-network systems. Transportation planners and emergency managers need methods to help them determine if a road network can handle an evacuation surge and if not, where interventions can best reduce overall clearance times. We use the coastal community of Bay Farm Island (City of Alameda, California, USA) and the distant-tsunami threat posed by Aleutian-Alaskan earthquakes as a case study to explore the use of agent-based, transportation simulation to support short-notice, tsunami-evacuation planning. Results demonstrate how vehicle simulation can characterize network performance during a tsunami evacuation in the absence of real-world measurements of vehicle demand and flow. Changes in vehicle demand had the greatest influence on reductions in clearance times and recommended reductions varied based on time of day. Doubling the capacity of certain road segments based on traditional vehicle-capacity ratios and level-of-service thresholds reduced overall clearance time in some cases but increased it in other cases. The proposed simulation approach can serve as an analytical foundation for future efforts to characterize distant-tsunami evacuations in other coastal communities throughout the world. |
| first_indexed | 2024-12-13T04:46:43Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-1d8c6ed9d03f4f1a91e958db29e12458 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 2590-1982 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-12-13T04:46:43Z |
| publishDate | 2020-09-01 |
| publisher | Elsevier |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives |
| spelling | doaj.art-1d8c6ed9d03f4f1a91e958db29e124582022-12-21T23:59:08ZengElsevierTransportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives2590-19822020-09-017100211Influence of demand and capacity in transportation simulations of short-notice, distant-tsunami evacuationsNathan Wood0Kevin Henry1Jeff Peters2U.S. Geological Survey, Western Geographic Science Center, 2130 SW 5th Avenue, Portland, OR, USA; Corresponding author.U.S. Geological Survey, Western Geographic Science Center, 6000 J Street Placer Hall, Sacramento, CA, USAU.S. Geological Survey, Western Geographic Science Center, 350 N. Akron Rd., Moffett Field, CA 94035, USADistant tsunamis require short-notice evacuations in coastal communities to minimize threats to life safety. Given the available time to evacuate and potential distances out of hazard zones, coastal transportation planners and emergency managers can expect large proportions of populations to evacuate using vehicles. A community-wide, short-notice, distant-tsunami evacuation is challenging because it creates a sudden, significant, and concentrated demand on road-network systems. Transportation planners and emergency managers need methods to help them determine if a road network can handle an evacuation surge and if not, where interventions can best reduce overall clearance times. We use the coastal community of Bay Farm Island (City of Alameda, California, USA) and the distant-tsunami threat posed by Aleutian-Alaskan earthquakes as a case study to explore the use of agent-based, transportation simulation to support short-notice, tsunami-evacuation planning. Results demonstrate how vehicle simulation can characterize network performance during a tsunami evacuation in the absence of real-world measurements of vehicle demand and flow. Changes in vehicle demand had the greatest influence on reductions in clearance times and recommended reductions varied based on time of day. Doubling the capacity of certain road segments based on traditional vehicle-capacity ratios and level-of-service thresholds reduced overall clearance time in some cases but increased it in other cases. The proposed simulation approach can serve as an analytical foundation for future efforts to characterize distant-tsunami evacuations in other coastal communities throughout the world.http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590198220301226VehicleEvacuationSimulationShort noticeTsunamiHazard |
| spellingShingle | Nathan Wood Kevin Henry Jeff Peters Influence of demand and capacity in transportation simulations of short-notice, distant-tsunami evacuations Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives Vehicle Evacuation Simulation Short notice Tsunami Hazard |
| title | Influence of demand and capacity in transportation simulations of short-notice, distant-tsunami evacuations |
| title_full | Influence of demand and capacity in transportation simulations of short-notice, distant-tsunami evacuations |
| title_fullStr | Influence of demand and capacity in transportation simulations of short-notice, distant-tsunami evacuations |
| title_full_unstemmed | Influence of demand and capacity in transportation simulations of short-notice, distant-tsunami evacuations |
| title_short | Influence of demand and capacity in transportation simulations of short-notice, distant-tsunami evacuations |
| title_sort | influence of demand and capacity in transportation simulations of short notice distant tsunami evacuations |
| topic | Vehicle Evacuation Simulation Short notice Tsunami Hazard |
| url | http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590198220301226 |
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