A-RESCUE: An Agent based Regional Evacuation Simulator Coupled with User Enriched Behavior
Authored by Weihao Yin, Pamela Murray-Tuite, Satish V Ukkusuri, Samiul Hasan, Binh Luong, Kien Doan, Xianyuan Zhan
Date Published: 2017
DOI: 10.1007/s11067-016-9323-0
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Abstract
Household behavior and dynamic traffic flows are the two most important
aspects of hurricane evacuations. However, current evacuation models
largely overlook the complexity of household behavior leading to
oversimplified traffic assignments and, as a result, inaccurate
evacuation clearance times in the network. In this paper, we present a
high fidelity multi- agent simulation model called A-RESCUE (Agent-based
Regional Evacuation Simulator Coupled with User Enriched behavior) that
integrates the rich activity behavior of the evacuating households with
the network level assignment to predict and evaluate evacuation
clearance times. The simulator can generate evacuation demand on the
fly, truly capturing the dynamic nature of a hurricane evacuation. The
simulator consists of two major components: household decision-making
module and traffic flow module. In the simulation, each household is an
agent making various evacuation related decisions based on advanced
behavioral models. From household decisions, a number of vehicles are
generated and entered in the evacuation transportation network at
different time intervals. An adaptive routing strategy that can achieve
efficient network-wide traffic measurements is proposed. Computational
results are presented based on simulations over the Miami- Dade network
with detailed representation of the road network geometry. The
simulation results demonstrate the evolution of traffic congestion as a
function of the household decision-making, the variance of the
congestion across different areas relative to the storm path and the
most congested O-D pairs in the network. The simulation tool can be used
as a planning tool to make decisions related to how traffic information
should be communicated and in the design of traffic management policies
such as contra-flow strategies during evacuations.
Tags
Agent Based Modeling
Hurricane evacuation
Traffic simulation
Model
System
Dynamic routing
Discrete
choice model