Pattern-based evacuation planning for urban areas

The population of an urban area may be in danger due to disasters like floods, hurricanes, chemical or nuclear accidents. This requires decisions to protect the affected population. One decision may be to evacuate the affected area. For the exceptional case of an evacuation an approach to reorganize the traffic routing of the endangered area is developed. In this paper a two-stage heuristic solution approach for a pattern-based mixed integer dynamic network flow model is presented. The model restructures the traffic routing such that the evacuees leave the evacuation area as safe as possible and as early as possible within the considered time horizon.

► A new pattern-based model formulation for evacuation planning is proposed. ► A two-stage heuristic is presented which outperforms relaxation techniques. ► Decisions on allowing contraflow traffic are supported. ► Traffic flow conflicts at intersections are taken into account.