Seminar on An Integrated, Dynamic, Multi-modal Emergency Evacuation System for the City of Baltimore

Date, time & venue 
2010-02-24;5:30pm - 7:30pm (5:30pm-6:00pm reception);Room HJ303, the Hong Kong Poly University, Hung Hom

Jointly organized with Hong Kong Society for Transportation Studies and Department of Civil & Structural Engineering, PolyU

Programme Highlights

Efficient evacuation of populations to pre-designated safety destinations within the allowable time during emergency has emerged as not only a priority research but also an operational issue. Given the real-world constraints on the network monitoring and system control, the primary challenge during emergency evacuation lies in how to best direct evacuees from the incident impact zones to target transportation modes and to the assigned evacuation routes.  In developing an effective plan for such applications, one shall take into account a variety of complex operational issues.  This seminar will illustrate an integrated multimodal emergency evacuation system for the City of Baltimore.  The proposed system has been developed to address all those complex operational issues during emergency evacuation.  The model framework, key module formulations, and demonstration of system applications will also be included in the presentation.

Speaker

Prof. Chang Gang-Len, University of Maryland

Registration & Enquiries

Please click http://www.hkie.org.hk/docs/newsletter/20100206/Baltimore.pdf for more information or call Prof. William H.K. Lam at Tel. 2766 6045.

Free admission, for registration and reservation, please contact Ms Connie Lam at Tel: 2766 6070, Fax: 2334 6389 or e-mail: cecfylam@polyu.edu.hk.

Report

Reported by Ir Oscar Yu

On 24 February 2010, CVL Division, HKSTS and HK PolyU jointly organised a technical seminar on an integrated, dynamic, multi-modal emergency evacuation system for the city of Baltimore. The Speaker, Prof. Gang-Len Chang, University of Maryland, delivered a comprehensive presentation on the emergency evacuation system for Baltimore.

As many US major metropolises need to consider how to evacuate a large amount of populations efficiently to pre-designated safety destinations within the allowable time window for various emergency situations such as a bomb threat or chemical attack.  This becomes a major research project with due consideration on operational issue.  Prof. Chang discussed the challenges in developing an effective model for such applications including determination of impact zones, priority to particular groups, conflicts between massive pedestrian and vehicular flows of the affected areas, dynamic guidance of pedestrian flows to subway or bus stations, identification of optimal locations for buses to pick up evacuees, etc.

Prof. Chang then illustrated the multimodal emergency evacuation system which has been developed to tackle all those complex operational issues.  Prof Chang explained that the system consists of complex simulation models, e.g. mixed-flow, bus routing models, and how the system simulates the emergency evacuation, e.g. the evacuees waiting behaviour, bus routing, mixed flow of pedestrians and vehicles.  The seminar ended with an intensive Q&A session, which application of the emergency evacuation system to fire engineering and evacuation were explored.

Photographs

2 photos attached