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Best Practices for Road Weather Management Version 2.0

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Title:

Heuristic Prioritization of Emergency Evacuation Staging to Reduce Clearance Time

Abstract:

This paper evaluated various heuristic strategies to improve evacuation of an at-risk region using a representative traffic roadway network. Finding evacuation strategies that reduce clearance time will lead to saving lives, time, and money. For the given test network, population density, or total number of trips, has an effect on overall clearance times; as densities (trips) increase, a greater potential for improved clearance time is indicated. Six different shift strategies were evaluated, each strategy based on origin to destination distances. For departure volumes greater than five vehicles per acre (approximately 2 vehicles/hectare), clearance times showed statistically significant improvements when shifting departure times for groups within the network. In addition, the amount of the departure shift has an effect on clearance time.

Source(s):

85th Transportation Research Board (TRB) Annual Meeting, University of Central Florida. For an electronic copy of this resource, please direct your request to WeatherFeedback@dot.gov.

Date: 2006

Author:

Mitchell, Radwan

Keywords:


Evacuation

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