Emergency Evacuations, Transportation Networks

Synonyms

Consequence management; Evacuation model systems; Immediate response zone; Protective action zone; Roadway network model

Definition

Evacuation modeling systems (EMS) have been developed to facilitate the planning, analysis, and deployment of emergency evacuation of populations at risk. For any EMS, data such as road network maps, traffic control characteristics, and population distribution play critical roles in delineating emergency zones, estimating population at risk, and determining evacuation routes.

There are situations in which it is possible to plan in advance for an emergency evacuation including, for example, an explosion at a chemical processing facility or a radiological accident at a nuclear plant. In these cases, if an accident or a terrorist attack were to happen, then the best evacuation plan for the prevailing network and weather conditions would be deployed. In other instances-for example, the derailment of a train transporting hazardous materials-, there may...