Identifying the optimal configuration of one-way and two-way streets for contraflow operation during an emergency evacuation

Shahriar Afandizadeh (), Arash Jahangiri () and Navid Kalantari ()

Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, 2013, vol. 69, issue 3, 1315-1334

Abstract: As natural and man-made disasters have been increasing, interest in preventing crises and/or mitigating the associated consequences has been growing as well. When dealing with predictable disasters, there is a limited time for effective response, and people should be evacuated in a short time to minimize the fatalities. In such extraordinary situations, attention should be given to making better use of existing infrastructure. The aim of this study is to present a model for optimizing street directions in order to increase the outbound capacity of the network. However, because of the magnitude of the problem, an optimal solution cannot be reached through ordinary methods. Hence, the simulated annealing algorithm, which is a meta-heuristic technique, is used. Computational results on a case study demonstrate that this technique yields considerable improvement in the objective function of the problem which is total travel time of road network users. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2013

Keywords: Emergency evacuation; Optimal network configuration; Simulated annealing algorithm; Disasters; Contraflow (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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DOI: 10.1007/s11069-012-0359-2

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