Challenges in Evacuation Route Planning for Incident Management

The recent loss of lives and traffic jams (Figure 1) for tens of miles as hurricanes Rita and Katrina approached the Gulf coast demonstrate the enormous difficulty in evacuating urban areas [6]. Besides hurricanes, evacuation may be necessary due to other potential disasters, e.g., fire, terrorism, and nuclear or chemical plant accidents. Thus, the local emergency management community engages in evacuation route planning and required drills, e.g., fire-drills in schools and large office buildings.