NETWORK DESIGN FOR EVACUATION PLANNING

Security threats and natural disasters (such as hurricanes and cyclones) are events that have historically led to large scale evacuations. Evacuation operations are strongly characterized by traffic volumes that substantially exceed the network capacity. This paper focuses on the planning aspects of evacuation by identifying contra-flow mechanisms integrated with the appropriate traffic signal control pattern, at the network level, that minimize the network clearance time. The study formulates the capacity addition problem as a mixed-integer network design problem. The cell transmission model is used to simulate the propagation of traffic flow.