A Pattern-Based Evacuation Planning Model for Urban Areas

Abstract

The urban evacuation model that will be presented in this chapter is a pattern-based dynamic network flow model without waiting. It is based on a detailed network, like the model presented in Chap. 3, that models every entrance/exit of every intersection and every possible direction within these intersections to map the traffic conflicts within them. The problem stays the same as in Chap. 3. The traffic routing for an emergency evacuation is to be determined such that the flow of evacuees traveling from sources to sinks is optimized. The considered objective in this chapter is the weighted sum of flows entering the sinks, where the weights are increasing with time. We assume that every person can leave the evacuation zone on its own by a vehicle. To provide a safe evacuation the traffic routing is adjusted subject to the following traffic management ideas: the readjustment of every street to a one-way street, whereas a street can be divided into two sections and these sections can lead in opposing directions, the prohibition of crossing conflicts and the limitation of the number of merging lanes within intersections.