Microsimulation of hurricane evacuation strategies of Galveston Island

Authored by Xuwei Chen

Date Published: 2008-05

DOI: 10.1080/00330120701873645

Sponsors: No sponsors listed

Platforms: VISSIM

Model Documentation: Other Narrative

Model Code URLs: Model code not found

Abstract

This article investigates the effectiveness of simultaneous and staged evacuation strategies for hurricane evacuations of Galveston Island using agent-based microsimulation techniques. In the simultaneous strategy the entire population is informed to evacuate simultaneously, whereas in a staged evacuation strategy, people are informed to evacuate in a sequence. The results suggest that (1) the most efficient staged evacuation strategy can help reduce the evacuation time for Galveston Island by approximately one hour, (2) previous studies might have underestimated the evacuation time of Galveston, and (3) an evacuation under the rapid response assumption does not necessarily lead to an effective evacuation.

Tags

Agent-based modeling Microsimulation Galveston Island simultaneous evacuation staged evacuation