EVAQ: A New Analytical Model for Voluntary and Mandatory Evacuation Strategies on Time-varying Networks

The analytical evacuation network model EVAQ enables forecasting traffic flow conditions on a road network for a wide range of emergency situations, such as hurricanes, bushfires and floods. The proposed model is innovative as it combines voluntary evacuation, with possible pre-trip and enroute decisions, and mandatory evacuation, with prescribed destinations, routes and departure times, within a single generic model framework. Furthermore, we introduce dynamic road infrastructure, in which characteristics such as speed limits, capacity and flow direction can be time-varying due to the hazard's progress in space and time and prevailing traffic regulations and control measures. The evacuation model can function as a decision support system for regional authorities and emergency services supervising an evacuation or constructing an evacuation strategy for planning purposes.