Gulf Freeway Evacuation Model
Client:
Team: Ava Damri, Calvin Smellage, Al Zinkand
Faculty advisor: Dr. Barr Year: 2009
Documents: Final report (Word), final presentation (PPT)
Our team examines the evacuation of six cities in the Gulf Freeway area stretching from Galveston in the south, to League City in the north. Any model created to solve the problem of evacuating a large number of people in a short time would need to account for real world complexities, such as multiple on-ramps, carrying capacities of highways, and the time required to close on-ramps in an emergency situation.
To solve the problem, our team chose a network flow model for its scalability and logical simplicity. To analyze the effectiveness of the completed model our team used as much real world data as we could obtain to mathematically recreate an evacuation. The model then analyzed the data to ascertain how long it would take to evacuate the area and what sort of stress such an evacuation would put on the existing road systems. The model suggests that an evacuation of the area is possible in a timely manner and that the existing highway infrastructure is the mose efficient evacuation route for travelers to utilize.