An optimal shelter selection model for emergency evacuation planning

Emergency evacuation plays a critical role in mitigating the impact from approaching disasters. However, it is possible that the existing transportation infrastructure could not provide sufficient roadway capacity to meet the evacuation demand during the evacuation process. To deal with the possible traffic congestion in emergency evacuation, the transportation sector should design appropriate evacuation plans with the goal to expedite the efficiency of evacuation. The importance of shelter locations has been pointed out in several researches. The evacuation trip distribution problem should be discussed when evaluate the locations of potential shelters. This research proposes a bi-level programming model to combine the shelter location problem and the evacuation trip distribution problem. From the result of numerical experiments, this bi-level model is applicable for pre-planning phase for the authority to make well-rounded plans.