An Integrated Bus - based Routing and Dispatching Approach for Flood Evacuation

Abstract

Floods are among the most dangerous natural disaster that leads to massive economic and human loss. This natural disaster can be dealt with effectively through efficient transportation coupled with communication facilities in flood-prone areas before it strikes. This paper proposes the optimisation model for evacuating people using bus transit before the occurrence of the flood. The process of evacuation commences with the issue of warning and extends up to a certain time before the striking of flood forecasts.  The model provides an optimised framework for 1) The location of pickup points and shelters 2) Assigning of pickup points to the nearest shelter using the shortest route among the available routes. On the basis of demand, each pickup point is allocated with a certain number of trips. Moreover, the modelling of dispatch sequence of public buses, random adventing of evacuees at pickup points and evacuees transit to the shelters are presented by developing a simulation tool. The results of simulation serve for assessing the route design and then further a local search heuristic is suggested for improving the route design during the evacuation.