Abstract
This paper documents studies of two real-world network evacuation cases,
each with a different, but proven, simulation software package. The purpose of
these studies was to examine whether the rate of evacuees' compliance with
predetermined route/destination assignments would have an impact on the
efficiency of evacuation operations. Results from both cases suggest that a rate
of less than 100% compliance does not compromise evacuation efficiency. In
fact, although this is counter-intuitive, evacuation efficiency would actually
improve as a result of "sensible" non-compliance on the part of the evacuees.
A closer observation of the results revealed that the somewhat unexpected
improvement results from a reduction in congestion along designated
evacuation routes as evacuees spread out to less prominent parallel streets and
other non-congested outbound routes.
This suggests that by being limited by the zone-to-zone and one-to-one
assignment framework, conventional evacuation plans may have fallen short
of providing the most efficient guidance to evacuees. To address this issue,
some systematic means, perhaps simulation-based, should be performed to
assess the zone partitions, route designations, and destination assignments in
existing evacuation plans.
Thus, evacuation planning with route/destination assignments based on
origin zones may be flawed and may deserve reconsideration. After all, once
en route, where an evacuee is coming from is of far less consequence than
where he or she is going.