Evacuation Models and Dynamics Project

October 31, 2008

LSU Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering faculty members, Dr. Brian Wolshon and Dr. Chester Wilmot, along with faculty from the E. J. Ourso College of Business, have been awarded $833,316 over six years from the United States Department of Homeland Security as part of the Center for Natural Disasters, Coastal Infrastructure, and Emergency Management led by the University of North Carolina. The center is one of 13 designated Homeland Security Centers of Excellence.

The goal of the “Evacuation Models and Dynamics” project is to enhance the capabilities of emerging evacuation modeling systems by increasing their level of detail and the robustness of transportation simulation. The researchers propose to use enhanced models to more effectively plan regional transportation infrastructure improvements for disaster scenarios, and to test, evaluate, and manage evacuations under a variety of potential conditions. This research will incorporate a multistep approach to integrate geographic information systems, transportation policy, evacuation travel demand forecasting, and operational-level multimodal traffic modeling on a regional basis.

In addition, the project will be enhanced by leveraging currently ongoing projects at the participating institutions, including the TRANSIMS regional multimodal evacuation model under development at LSU and the GIS mapping systems at Mississippi State University. The research will initially focus on the New Orleans region, and then be applied to Houston area with a ultimate goal of generalizing it to other locations and types of hazards. The findings will also inform the temporal declaration of evacuation orders and the implementation of pro-active evacuation measures such as phased evacuations and contraflow. Finally, they will improve the integration of disaster management needs into the two, six, and 25 year transportation system planning processes.

Article excerpted from the LSU Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering July 2008 Newsletter, Volume 7, Summer Issue