Service level-oriented route guidance during evacuations

Research in the field of evacuation management puts a strong focus on the development of optimal evacuation and control strategies. However, in operational evacuation management the means to monitor, manage, evaluate and control are limited. The authorities nevertheless have a strong need to understand the system, in order to properly guide evacuating traffic. This indicates the need for a simple, yet efficient control approach to operationalize the evacuation objectives based on real-time available data. This paper presents a predictive route guidance approach that is able to do this by degrading and restoring target service levels of evacuation routes according to the prevailing negative effects of queue spill back. The control approach consists of a finite-state machine that determines target service levels based on predicted traffic conditions. These target service levels are used in a feedback controller as setpoints, resulting in the corresponding output signal of a Variable Message Sign. By means of a test case, the finitestate machine is compared with model predictive control-based route guidance (that realizes system optimal conditions), with a user equilibrium feedback controller (that realizes user optimal conditions) and with a do-nothing scenario. The results show that the finite-state machine is able to prevent or limit the negative effects of blocking back in a comprehensible and efficient way, while the interests of the road users are also taken into account. © 2011 Published by [PUBLISHER CO NAME HERE] Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of [name organizer]