Optimisation patterns for the process of a planned evacuation in the event of a flood

ABSTRACT

The main purpose of the article is to develop an optimisation pattern for the process of a preventive evacuation of people from flood-risk areas (at the first sign of a flood), aimed at mitigating the negative effects of the flood performed through the application of modern computer tools. It has been assumed that the use of both GIS tools and apps for vehicle traffic modelling (the research includes the use of a method developed by the authors) in emergency procedures implemented in response to a flood may increase the efficiency of the anti-flood campaign (here: the evacuation of residents from flooded areas), and thus, it may also minimise the negative effects of the flooding itself. The article distinguishes 14 stages of research, which were chiefly completed by means of the following methods: distance-based accessibility, cumulative accessibility, the Enhanced Two-Step Floating Catchment Area Method (E2SFCA) and the Two-Step Floating Catchment Area Method (2SFCA), the vehicle routing method, algorithms by Dinitz, Edmonds-Karp, and Ford-Fulkerson, and a comparative method applied to draw a comparison between the actual state of affairs and the optimum condition determined by the aforementioned methods.

KEYWORDS:

• Evacuation
• flood-risk areas
• accessibility
• mobility
• GIS

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.