Evacuation in flood threat scenarios

Evacuation in flood threat scenarios: Improving methods to estimate the required time for evacuation.

Dannenberg, Paul (TU Delft Technology, Policy and Management)

van Gelder, P.H.A.J.M. (mentor)
Jonkman, Sebastiaan N. (mentor)
Kolen, B. (mentor)
van Well, Eddy (graduation committee)
Poot, Koos (graduation committee)

Delft University of Technology

Management of Technology (MoT)

2020-03-26

Evacuation is a tool to minimise the loss of life and economic damages in flood (threat) scenarios. There is currently little data available on mass evacuation in the Netherlands to calibrate existing models or to develop new insights. This thesis aims to improve the methods used in the Netherlands to estimate the effectiveness of evacuation with methods developed by the United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE). This USACE method includes a questionnaire that can be completed with authorities which in turn estimates the time it takes for authorities to give a warning to evacuate, how fast the warning spread through the population and how fast people will react to this warning. The results of this thesis showed that this “USACE assessment method” could be a valuable source of information to the Netherlands. However, due to the different threat scenarios and command structure(s) found in the USA several adaptations are needed to this USACE assessment method to make it usable in the Netherlands. However, this thesis also showed that the effect of (most) measures takes by authorities in the Netherlands will be limited by the heavy road congestion during evacuation. Traffic jams will quickly develop and any improvements with respect to evacuation will be cancelled out. So a recommendation that follows from this report is that authorities in the Netherlands shift their focus from an area specific evacuation strategy to a national evacuation strategy so new traffic management option can be developed that can limit these traffic jams. Another conclusion of this thesis is that agent based and micro level evacuation and loss of life models (models where people are modelled separately and area specific parameters are taken into account and thus include much more detail) add little to nothing to the evacuation strategies of the Netherlands compared to the current used macro models (models where an overarching view of the evacuation is used). Again, this is due to the large traffic congestion where traffic jams will almost immediately develop. When better traffic management options are available these micro level and agent based models may provide new insights on the evacuation effectiveness of specific areas.

Evacuation modelling

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:9268d9fe-eab7-4ce4-bf47-612a0664cf45

Student theses

master thesis

© 2020 Paul Dannenberg