Events Calendar

PhD Defense - Kaveh Shahabi

Defense: Kaveh Shahabi

Committee: Dr. John Wilson (chair), Dr. Aiichiro Nakano, and Dr. James Moore (outside)

Space / Time: SAL 213 / Aug 31st, 1-3pm

Title: Scalable Evacuation Routing in Dynamic Environments

Abstract:
In the face of a natural or man-made disaster, evacuation planning refers to the process of reallocating the endangered population to a set of safe places, often in a hurry. Such a task needs proper preparation, execution, and most definitely a post-disaster response. We have contributed a new taxonomy of the evacuation planning problem and categorized available solutions. Evacuation routing is part of the bigger problem that finds the best routes to relocate the endangered population to safety. We propose a new method to perform evacuation routing efficiently under capacity constraints. Traditionally, simulation software or shortest path routing combined with zonal scheduling have been used to solve routing problems. Our method utilizes a state-of-the-art algorithm to connect each source node to its nearest destination. It also intelligently takes into account transportation network capacity and traffic flow to minimize congestion and system-wide transportation times. We also define the dynamic evacuation routing problem and propose a solution. The dynamic solution is capable of updating routes if the network topology is changed during the evacuation process. Effectively, it can solve the evacuation problem for a moving disaster. Together these new developments pave the path for future researchers to study the evacuation problem and to integrate it into urban transportation services. Hopefully one day we can save more lives than before when future disasters occur.

Location: Henry Salvatori Computer Science Center (SAL) - 213

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Lizsl De Leon