A-RESCUE: An Agent based Regional Evacuation Simulator Coupled with User Enriched Behavior

Satish V. Ukkusuri (), Samiul Hasan, Binh Luong, Kien Doan, Xianyuan Zhan, Pamela Murray-Tuite and Weihao Yin
Additional contact information
Satish V. Ukkusuri: Purdue University
Samiul Hasan: CSIRO, Cities Program, Land & Water Flagship
Binh Luong: Purdue University
Kien Doan: Urban-Civil Works Construction Investment Management Authority of Ho Chi Minh City
Xianyuan Zhan: Purdue University
Pamela Murray-Tuite: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Virginia Tech
Weihao Yin: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Virginia Tech

Networks and Spatial Economics, 2017, vol. 17, issue 1, No 8, 197-223

Abstract: Abstract Household behavior and dynamic traffic flows are the two most important aspects of hurricane evacuations. However, current evacuation models largely overlook the complexity of household behavior leading to oversimplified traffic assignments and, as a result, inaccurate evacuation clearance times in the network. In this paper, we present a high fidelity multi-agent simulation model called A-RESCUE (Agent-based Regional Evacuation Simulator Coupled with User Enriched behavior) that integrates the rich activity behavior of the evacuating households with the network level assignment to predict and evaluate evacuation clearance times. The simulator can generate evacuation demand on the fly, truly capturing the dynamic nature of a hurricane evacuation. The simulator consists of two major components: household decision-making module and traffic flow module. In the simulation, each household is an agent making various evacuation related decisions based on advanced behavioral models. From household decisions, a number of vehicles are generated and entered in the evacuation transportation network at different time intervals. An adaptive routing strategy that can achieve efficient network-wide traffic measurements is proposed. Computational results are presented based on simulations over the Miami-Dade network with detailed representation of the road network geometry. The simulation results demonstrate the evolution of traffic congestion as a function of the household decision-making, the variance of the congestion across different areas relative to the storm path and the most congested O-D pairs in the network. The simulation tool can be used as a planning tool to make decisions related to how traffic information should be communicated and in the design of traffic management policies such as contra-flow strategies during evacuations.

Keywords: Agent based modeling; Hurricane evacuation; Dynamic routing; Discrete choice model; Traffic simulation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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DOI: 10.1007/s11067-016-9323-0

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