Review of Policies and Practices for Hurricane Evacuation. I: Transportation Planning, Preparedness, and Response

Abstract

Although evacuation planning and operations have long been topics of critical significance to the hazards preparedness and response community, only in the past several years have they emerged to become important issues among transportation professionals. The increased level of interest has been the result of several recent high-profile evacuations and the realization that, in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks, the potential need to rapidly evacuate large populations is perhaps greater than it has ever been. This paper is the first in a two-part series that reviews transportation engineering aspects of hurricane evacuations, addressing policies and practices for transportation system planning, preparedness, and response. (Part II focuses on traffic operations, management, and control.) Results of a survey of state evacuation practices are presented, including command and control strategies, types of evacuations used, and implementation and enforcement criteria. Evacuation modeling methods are reviewed and recent transportation community initiatives are discussed. Although this study focused primarily on issues pertaining to hurricane evacuations, many of the findings are also applicable to multihazard evacuation planning and operations.