Trip Distribution Model for Flood Disaster Evacuation Operation

Effective disaster management plans, especially those that include transportation systems, can help mitigate losses from natural disasters. This paper presents a model for evaluating operations before and during flood disasters. Several steps were conducted to formulate this model: (1) a disaster management system framework was developed that illustrates the components of such a system; (2) the relationship between transportation planning and disaster management system planning was determined; and (3) a flood disaster evacuation operation trip distribution matrix model was developed. The trip distribution matrix model required identifying the level of emergency and the adequacy of local resources. The matrix model seeks to find the minimum total travel time and satisfies the constraints of transporting people from affected zones and the capacities of relocation shelters. A hypothetical case study showed that a linear programming simplex method was the most effective way to estimate the total travel time of the population from affected zones to relocation shelters.