Engineering Commons^™

Temporal-Spatial Analysis Of Emergency Evacuation Traffic, Lorraine Margot Acevedo Loreto

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Mass evacuations, particularly those at a statewide level, represent the largest single-event traffic movements that exist. These complex events can last several days, cover thousands of miles of roadway, and include hundreds of thousands of people and vehicles. Often, they are also marked by enormous delay and congestion and are nearly always criticized for their inefficiency and lack of management. However, there are no standardized methods by which to systematically quantify traffic characteristics at the proper scale. This paper describes research to develop and apply an analytical method to measure and describe statewide mass-evacuations in a practical, cost-effective manner. The …