Dynamic Plan Generation and Real-Time Management Techniques for Traffic Evacuation

Surface transportation systems play a crucial role in responding to natural disasters and other catastrophic incidents that have devastating impacts on the lives of people all over the world. Intelligent transportation systems (ITS) can play an important role not only in improving the operational efficiency of a transportation system but also in enhancing its safety and security. In this paper, we propose new techniques for augmenting ITS to improve and support homeland security. In particular, we propose two evacuation algorithms, i.e., all-links and fastest-links, and perform simulation studies to compare their performance. These algorithms are part of a smart traffic evacuation management system (STEMS) developed to provide rapid and efficient response to human-caused threats and disasters by automatically generating dynamic evacuation plans based on incident location and scope and subsequently automatically controlling traffic lights to direct evacuation traffic in a safe manner.