Author

Asadur Rahman

Date of Award

4-2009

Degree Name

Master of Science in Engineering

Department

Civil and Construction Engineering

First Advisor

Dr. Hubo Cai

Second Advisor

Dr. Jun-Seok Oh

Third Advisor

Dr. Osama Abudayyey

Access Setting

Masters Thesis-Campus Only

Abstract

Disasters such as floods and wildfires are unexpected, sudden events occurring all over the world. When such an event occurs, residents in the affected areas have to be evacuated in a timely manner to save lives and reduce losses. Emergency evacuation must be planned by incorporating the characteristics of the target population and the context. Based on various characteristics, communities are different. Campus community is different than other communities in the aspects of the number of population, roadway network, working time, and parking facilities. And emergency evacuation for campus communities has not been specifically addressed yet to our knowledge.

Many evacuation strategies have emerged, like the counter-flow, setting barriers to control traffic flow and minimize conflicts, and timed modification. This research work developed strategies for setting up barriers to facilitate evacuation for vehicles. Evaluation of these strategies has been done by comparing their performance to "No barrier" case. TRANSIMS was used to find out problematic nodes and links, and to validate the model. Five scenarios have been considered in this research. In this research, I have found that the evacuation time for barrier-used scenario is at least seven percent less than no-barrier scenario. Future work can be done for both pedestrians and vehicles.

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