Abstract

In this talk, I will introduce a new Integrated Scenario-based Evacuation (ISE) framework to support hurricane evacuation decision-making. It explicitly captures the dynamics, uncertainty, and human-natural system interactions that are fundamental to the challenge of hurricane evacuation, but have not been fully captured in previous efforts. Hazard is represented using an ensemble of probabilistic scenarios, population behavior using a dynamic decision model, and traffic with a dynamic user equilibrium model. The components are integrated in a multi-stage stochastic programming model that minimizes risk and travel times to provide a tree of evacuation order recommendations and an evaluation of the risk and travel time performance for that solution. The ISE framework recommendations offer an advance in the state-of-the-art because: (1) they are based on an integrated hazard assessment, (2) they explicitly balance the sometimes competing objectives of minimizing risk and minimizing travel time, (3) they offer a well-hedged solution that is robust under the range of ways the hurricane might evolve, and (4) they leverage the substantial value of increasing information (or decreasing degree of uncertainty) over the course of a hurricane event. A case study for Hurricane Isabel (2003) in Eastern North Carolina is presented to demonstrate how the framework is applied, the type of results it can provide, and how it compares to available methods of a single scenario deterministic analysis and a two-stage stochastic program.

Rachel Davidson is a Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, a core faculty member in the Disaster Research Center, and Associate Dean for Diversity at the University of Delaware. She conducts research on natural disaster risk modeling and civil infrastructure systems. She is a Fellow and Past-President of the Society for Risk Analysis, a Fellow of the Executive Leadership in Academic Technology and Engineering (ELATE) program, and past-Chair of the Executive Committee of the ASCE Technical Council on Lifeline Earthquake Engineering (TCLEE). She has been a mentor for the "Enabling the Next Generation of Hazards and Disaster Researchers" program and the Careeer Enhancement of Academic Women in Earthquake Engineering (ENHANCE) program, both funded by NSF.

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