The image of a backed-up highway leading away from the scene of a natural disaster may soon be history, if researcher Yi-Chang Chiu and his colleagues at the University of Arizona have their way. They've developed a traffic simulator that uses real-time traffic data along with detailed state and federal traffic statistics and behavior modeling to allow officials to simulate disaster evacuations in real time -- or even predict the course of events as a disaster is happening. The software adjusts for such varied data as driver reactions to radio reports and wind dispersal of smoke and other pollutants; it even calculates the number of casualties and their effect. Chiu has been building the simulator since 1995, and he's ready to start selling to state transportation and medical emergency agencies. Interestingly, Chiu says his real research focus is on calculating optimum "value-priced" toll rates -- something we're certain most state transportation departments regard as the real disaster.
posted Jun 15th 2007 1:25AM
What can I say, I am in one of the cars in the pic :)
i took Airline Dr.
:(
bah! my old company did that for years! sounds like they just added some scary 9/11 · katrina data to the mix and called it newsworthy. how about trying to fix the traffic jams we have TODAY and coordinate and fix the traffic lights you have to day government and consultants?
http://www.trafficware.com/simtraffic7.html
Hey, that's the road I take to get to work everyday.
I don't see how traffic simulations can do much for massive evacuations. Roads have absolute limits of capacity and a large-scale evacuation overwhelms that capacity exponentially. Even if you were to design an efficient, perfectly orchestrated evacuation, you need an enforcement mechanism to force it. During the Katrina evacuation, city officials instituted a phased evacuation in which certain geographical areas were to leave in certain time-frames, but I don't believe it was widely followed.
As for the "value priced" tolls, they're ridiculous. If rising gas prices aren't affecting driving habits, what would make people think petty toll price changes would change anything?
"roads have absolute limits of capacity"
True, but by changing a two way road into a one way road, you can double a road's capacity.
Here's an idea. When you really need to get everyone out, use "all lanes" of major freeways/highways to "evacuate" people in their cars. Arterial roads can be used if people need to "get in", but that would only be emergency personel.
Everyone headed to the Airport is one thing, but the minimum five plus hours you'll spend in traffic/waiting for a plane, you could be far away.
if you really need to get everyone "out" in a hurry, increase petrol prices so they don't take their cars so I can breathe again, thanks.
Then model your software to calculate how many people die from pollutant-related problems...