Modeling and simulation of cascading failures in transportation systems during hurricane evacuations

Effective and timely evacuation is critical in alleviating the impact of hurricanes. As such, evacuation models are often sought to support the preparedness of evacuations. One important task in the modeling process is to evaluate exogenous factors that cause transportation system capacity loss during evacuation. Typical factors include direct damage to the roadway network due to storm surge and cascading impacts because of other facilities failures. For example, power outage can lead to signal failure and subway suspension. This paper aims to develop a macroscopic simulation-based approach to study the capacity loss of roadway network in evacuation due to signal loss as a consequence of power outage. In particular, to simulate the case in which traffic signals lose power, a capacity-reduction model from signalized intersections to unsignalized (all-way stop control) intersections was developed and calibrated using microscopic model created in SUMO and Synchro. The authors used the downtown Manhattan as a case study area and created a hypothetical power-grid network in terms of Neighborhoods. Six scenarios were built to simulate power loss of different neighborhoods. The simulation results give insights on how cascading failures of power network affect roadway network and evacuation process.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ABR20 Standing Committee on the Logistics of Disaster Response and Business Continuity.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  ,    
• Authors:
  • Zhu, Yuan
  • Ozbay, Kaan
  • Yang, Hong
  • Zuo, Fan
  • Sha, Di
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 98th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2019-1-13 to 2019-1-17
• Date: 2019

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; Maps; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 17p

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Case studies; Evacuation; Highway capacity; Hurricanes; Planning; Power loss; Signalized intersections; Simulation; Unsignalized intersections
• Geographic Terms: Manhattan
• Subject Areas: Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; Planning and Forecasting; Security and Emergencies;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01697973
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 19-03240
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Mar 1 2019 3:51PM