A spatially explicit network science model for emergency evacuations in an urban context

• A spatially explicit network science emergency evacuation model is designed.
• The model represents the complexity of an emergency evacuation.
• The model accounts for physical, biological, and social phenomena.
• Toxic release evacuation scenarios demonstrate model applicability.

Emergency evacuations are essential for protecting humans from hazardous events such as wildfires, tsunamis, hurricanes, and industrial accidents. In urban regions, effective emergency management is highly dependent on reliable knowledge about potential traffic congestion hotspots that can arise during an evacuation. Spatially explicit models that combine network science and optimization techniques within a Geographic Information System (GIS) can target the unique physical, biological, and social characteristics of an area to provide more locally relevant evacuation traffic congestion predictions. The objective of this study is to design and implement the Network Science Emergency Evacuation Model (NetSEEM) using spatially explicit network science principles. The NetSEEM design is theoretically robust and can be adapted for different geographic areas and hazard types to represent the specific complexity of emergency evacuation situations. The developed NetSEEM model is applied to four evacuation scenarios in the City of Burnaby, BC, Canada. The results show expected congestion patterns at the major transportation intersections, and highlight NetSEEM as an exploratory management tool to anticipate and mitigate traffic congestion during context-dependent emergency evacuations.