Importance of Information Collection and Dissemination for Evacuation Modeling and Management

Information collection and dissemination for emergency management can be in different forms and nature, such as pre/post evacuation surveys, evacuation order from the officials during an emergency, pre-trip or en-route routing information evacuee departure counts, weather conditions, prevailing traffic conditions in the transportation network, and tracking of shelter information etc. Some of these may be more valuable if collected in real time, e.g. weather, traffic and demand conditions. However all evacuation related information can also be used for the long term planning and policy making as well. In this study, evacuation network performance measures and the reliability of an evacuation plan are discussed in terms of the impacts of available collected data and real-time information flow. Uncertainties in demand profile and the link capacities in the traffic network are tackled by employing a cell transmission model (CTM) based system optimal dynamic traffic assignment (SO DTA) model.