Application Of Traffic Simulation For Mega Region Evacuation Traffic Analysis Under Predictable Emergency

Over the past decade, there has been a growing census of long range climatological forecasters that the earth is experiencing significant changes in its climate. These changes, particularly those related to ocean warming and sea-level rise threaten coastal regions throughout the world. More active and severe weather patterns thought to be linked to the-se conditions appear to be increasing both the frequency and severity of tropical storm sys-tems. Adding to the level of threat over this same period has been a parallel explosion of population growth along coastal regions worldwide. These increases have given rise to a new phenomenon or urban development, known as the mega region.Mega regions are continuously populated areas that have grown together over time from distinctly separate individual cities or populated areas to form continuously densely popu-lated areas that may span over many hundreds of miles. In the United States, there are two obvious mega regions, including the Boston-New York-Philadelphia-Baltimore-Washington DC area and the San Diego-Los Angeles region of Southern California with the potential to have several more in Florida, the Midwest-Great Lakes, and the Gulf Coast areas within the next25to50years. These areas are dwarfed, however, by mega regions in other areas of the world. The Hong Kong, Shenhzen, and Guangzhou Region of China, that includes about120million people is considered the world’s first mega region. Similar trends are occurring elsewhere in China as well as in India, Brazil, Japan, and West Africa.When the trends of climate change and population growth are combined, it is inevitable that there will also be a significant increase in the number of catastrophic disasters that can threaten millions of people. With this realization also comes the need to plan and prepare for such occurrences. One of the basic tools of emergency management is the use of re-gional mass evacuations. However, the idea of conducting a mega region evacuation that could include tens of millions of people has never been realistically considered. This re-search seeks to take the initial steps toward investigating the mega region evacuation issue.In the research, a traffic simulation model was developed to analyze traffic conditions associated with a mega region mass emergency evacuation. Similar to the growth process of actual mega regions, the mega region test case used in the research was developed for a theoretical mega region along the US Gulf Coast from New Orleans to Houston. While this area cannot yet be considered a true mega region, it does encompass a population of about12million people with the potential for considerable growth in the future. It was also se-lected because two regional evacuation traffic simulation models have already been devel- oped for New Orleans and Houston. Thus, the test mega region was formed by "con-necting" those two separate models with those of the Baton Rouge, Lafayette, Lake Charles, and Beaumont regions in between.The model was constructed using the TRANSIMS mesoscopic activity-based transpor-tation modeling system. TRANSIMS was thought to be well-suited to the research plan because it permits the development of the simulation because it is able to utilize existing census and geographical data to build populations and networks. These can then be modi-fied to represent future growth and development with the region. In the research, a range of population, road network, behavioral response, and regional transportation management strategies were evaluated to examine the relationship between these various variables and the performance of the transportation system.Thus, speed time-space plots and volume time-space plots on critical corridors as well as the Macroscopic measure of performance (Macro MOE) can be draw for different scenarios. A further analysis demonstrated that evacuation demand as well as management strategies, such as contraflow and staged evacua-tion play important role in the evacuation process. A mathematical method, curve fitting was applied to extract network performance function in respond to demand and management strategies from the simulation results. Such function, not only can be used to estimate net-work performance given demand and management plans, but also be able to analyze how network performance would change in case one or two parameters changed. Such infor-mation can be used for emergency authorities and government stake holders to make deci-sions in the object of help evacuees get out of endangered areas safely as fast as possible.It is expected that the knowledge and results gained from this research will be adaptable to evaluate other locations with different road network, population, transportation, and haz-ard threats.