Simulation Modeling and Application with Emergency Vehicle Presence in CORSIM

In the scenario of a disaster in the downtown area, an evacuation plan should be considered to move anyone out of the disaster area as soon as possible. In the mean time, emergency rescue crews brought from the suburban or other areas also need to respond to the disaster as soon as possible. Both the inbound emergency vehicle response time and outbound evacuation time are critical to save lives. Evacuating the traffic management strategies under that scenario requires explicitly modeling the emergency vehicle and evacuation traffic. The TSIS/CORSIM 6.0 and 6.1 are capable of doing so. This paper will introduce CORSIM´s new emergency vehicle movement logic to the traffic engineering community. This logic includes the private vehicle´s siren and light response, preemption, and emergency vehicle movement logic on shoulders and red lights. The steps to properly code emergency vehicle in CORSIM simulation are also introduced in this paper. A case study of Route 7 (VA) corridor will be used to illustrate the simulation scenario with/without the explicitly modeled interaction between emergency vehicle and citizen vehicles (private owned vehicle, POV, is referred in this paper). The case studies show that there is a significant difference in evacuation traffic travel time and emergency response time with or without the CORSIM emergency logic. The time differences due to the simulation logic outweigh that affected by preemptions. The findings of these case studies indicate that the preemption strategy is helpful, especially in evacuation traffic management.