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Virginia Tech

Network Models In Evacuation Planning

Abstract

dc:description.abstract

This dissertation addresses the development and analysis of optimization models for evacuation planning. Specifically we consider the cases of large-scale regional evacuation using household vehicles and hospital evacuation. Since it is difficult to estimate the exact number of people evacuating, we first consider the case where the population size is uncertain. We review the methods studied in the literature, mainly the strategy of using a deterministic counterpart, i.e., a single deterministic parameter to represent the uncertain population, and we show that these methods are not very effective in generating a good traffic management strategy. We provide alternatives, where we describe some networks where an optimal policy exist independent of the demand realization and we propose some simple heuristics for more complex ones. Next we consider the traffic management tools that can be generated from an evacuation plan. We start by introducing the cell transmission model with flow reduction. This model captures the flow reduction after the onset of congestion. We then discuss the management tools that can be extracted from this model. We also propose some simplification to the model formulation to enhance its tractability. A heuristic for generating a solution is also proposed, and its solution quality is analyzed. Finally, we discuss the hospital evacuation problem where we develop an integer programming model that integrates the building evacuation with the transportation of patients. The impact of building evacuation capabilities on the transportation plan is investigated through the case of a large regional hospital case study. We also propose a decomposition scheme to improve the tractability of the integer program.

Degree

thesis:*
Name thesis:degree_name
Ph. D.
Level thesis:degree_level
doctoral
Discipline thesis:degree_discipline
Industrial and Systems Engineering
Department dc:contributor.department
Industrial and Systems Engineering
Grantor dc:publisher
Virginia Tech
Year dc:date.issued
2014

Author and committee

dc:creator, dc:contributor.*
Author dc:creator
  • Tarhini, Hussein Ali
Chair dc:contributor.committeechair
  • Bish, Douglas R.
Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember
  • Bish, Ebru K.
  • Pasupathy, Raghu
  • Rakha, Hesham A.

Subjects

dc:subject × 4

Rights

dc:rights
Statement dc:rights
  • In Copyright

Identifiers

dc:identifier.*
Dc Identifier Other
vt_gsexam:3328
OAI identifier oai:identifier
oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/64359

Chain of custody

source
Harvested from
Virginia Tech
Base URL
vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/oai/request
Last updated
2026-07-22
Source record
OAI-PMH GetRecord
citation

Tarhini, Hussein Ali. Network Models In Evacuation Planning. doctoral thesis, Virginia Tech, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/64359