Assessment of Emergency Facility Accessibility in the Presence of Hurricane-Related Roadway Closures and Prediction of Future Roadway Disruptions

Roadway closures magnify the adverse effects of disasters on people since any type of such disruption increases the emergency response travel time (ERTT), which is of central importance for the safety and survival of the affected people. Especially in the State of Florida, high winds due to hurricanes, such as the Hurricane Hermine, lead to notable roadway disruptions and closures that compel special attention. As such, the objective of this study was twofold. First, accessibility of emergency response facilities such as police stations, fire stations and hospitals in the City of Tallahassee, the capital of Florida, was extensively studied using real-life data on roadway closures due to Hermine. A new metric, namely Accessibility Decrease Index (ADI), was proposed, which measures the change in ERTT before and in the aftermath of a hurricane such as Hermine. Second, a scalable tree failure modeling approach was presented in order to estimate the probability of hurricane-related roadway disruptions under different hurricane wind speeds based on a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN)- and satellite image-based approach. Results clearly show those regions with reduced emergency response facility accessibility and roadways under a disruption risk in the one-week window after Hermine hit Tallahassee. City officials can pinpoint these critical locations for future improvements, and identify those critical roadways, which are under a risk of disruption due to hurricane impact. This information can be utilized to improve emergency response plans by improving the roadway infrastructure and providing alternative routes to public.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ABR30 Standing Committee on Emergency Evacuations.
• Authors:
  • Kocatepe, Ayberk
  • Ulak, Mehmet Baran
  • Kakareko, Grzegorz
  • Pinzan, Davide
  • Cordova, Jose
  • Ozguven, Eren Erman
  • 0000-0001-6006-7635
  • Jung, Sungmoon
  • Arghandeh, Reza
  • 0000-0002-0691-5426
  • Sobanjo, John Olusegun
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 97th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2018-1-7 to 2018-1-11
• Date: 2018

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; References;
• Pagination: 9p

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Accessibility; Disasters and emergency operations; Emergency response time; Hurricanes; Metrics (Quantitative assessment); Routes and routing; Street closure; Travel time
• Uncontrolled Terms: Traffic network disruption
• Geographic Terms: Tallahassee (Florida)
• Subject Areas: Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; Planning and Forecasting; Security and Emergencies;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01661468
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 18-05944
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Feb 28 2018 9:24AM