As different types of emergency situations are occurring more and more frequently, transportation evacuation modeling has drawn increasing researchinterests. Most of these studies focused on large-scale evacuations, suchas those caused by hurricanes. While large-scale evacuation studies are important, evacuation on small and dense areas is also essential, given thecontext that chemical leaking, terrorist attacks, and other unexpected accidents happening in these areas may also cause similar severe casualty. This paper studied transportation evacuation in a small and dense area, Texas Medical Center, by using microscopic simulation model VISSIM with the hypothetical event of a toxic material leakage. A general study procedure is proposed in detail and attributes differently from large-scale evacuation are taken into account. Various evacuation scenarios are evaluated, including different improvement options of reversed-lane, and inbound-shuttles. Generally for small area emergencies, arranging more inbound shuttles while limiting the departure of personal vehicles from garages is relativelythe better evacuation plan.
Abstract