Modeling and Solving Optimal Evacuation Destination-Route-Flow-Staging Problem for No-Notice Extreme Events

This paper presents the system optimal dynamic traffic modeling techniques for solving the optimal evacuation destination-route-flow-staging problem (EDRFS) for the no-notice mass evacuation. The building blocks of the presented methodology are the cell transmission model (CTM) developed by Daganzo in 1995 and 1996 and the linear programming formulation proposed by Ziliaskopoulos in 2000. The contribution of the research is the network transformation and model formulation techniques, which allow the system optimal evacuation destination-route-flow-staging decisions to be simultaneously solved in an efficient manner based on the CTM-based linear programming formulation. Due to the LP formulation and supporting solution algorithm, the presented approach exhibits great potential to be applied to both the offline planning and real-time operations for no-notice mass evacuation.