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Identifying the optimal configuration of one-way and two-way streets for contraflow operation during an emergency evacuation

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Abstract

As natural and man-made disasters have been increasing, interest in preventing crises and/or mitigating the associated consequences has been growing as well. When dealing with predictable disasters, there is a limited time for effective response, and people should be evacuated in a short time to minimize the fatalities. In such extraordinary situations, attention should be given to making better use of existing infrastructure. The aim of this study is to present a model for optimizing street directions in order to increase the outbound capacity of the network. However, because of the magnitude of the problem, an optimal solution cannot be reached through ordinary methods. Hence, the simulated annealing algorithm, which is a meta-heuristic technique, is used. Computational results on a case study demonstrate that this technique yields considerable improvement in the objective function of the problem which is total travel time of road network users.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Civil Engineering, Iran University of Science and Technology, Narmak, 1684613114, Tehran, Iran

    Shahriar Afandizadeh, Arash Jahangiri & Navid Kalantari

Authors
  1. Shahriar Afandizadeh
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  2. Arash Jahangiri
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  3. Navid Kalantari
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Arash Jahangiri.

Appendix A

Appendix A

Steps of the double-stage algorithm are as follows (Sheffi 1985).

  1. 1.

    Initialization: perform all-or-nothing assignment based on \( t_{a}^{Z} = t_{a}^{Z} (0)\quad \forall a,\;x_{a}^{Z1} \) are obtained, n = 1 as a counter.

  2. 2.

    Update \( t_{a}^{Zn} = t_{a}^{Zn} (x_{a}^{Zn} ), \, \forall a \)

  3. 3.

    Direction finding

    1. a.

      Calculate the shortest travel time path from each origin, r, to all destinations, based on t zn a .

    2. b.

      Determine the auxiliary O-D flows by applying a logit distribution model

    3. c.

      Assign the auxiliary flows to the minimum travel time path between r and s.

  4. 4.

    Line search. Find α n that solves \( \hbox{Min} \sum\limits_{a} {\int_{0}^{{x_{a}^{Zn} + \alpha \left( {y_{a}^{Zn} - x_{a}^{Zn} } \right)}} {t_{a} \left( \omega \right)} } d\omega ,0 \le \alpha \le 1 \)

  5. 5.

    Move: \( x_{a}^{Z(n + 1)} = x_{a}^{Zn} + \alpha_{n} \left( {y_{a}^{Zn} - x_{a}^{Zn} } \right),\forall a \)

  6. 6.

    Convergence test: if a convergence criterion is met, present the current solution \( \left( {x_{a}^{Z(n + 1)} } \right) \)as the final equilibrium link flows, otherwise n = n + 1 and go to step 2.

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Afandizadeh, S., Jahangiri, A. & Kalantari, N. Identifying the optimal configuration of one-way and two-way streets for contraflow operation during an emergency evacuation. Nat Hazards 69, 1315–1334 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-012-0359-2

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