Transportation Network Post-Disaster Planning and Management: A Review Part II: Decision-Making and Planning of Post-Disaster Operations
Maria Konstantinidou, Konstantinos Kepaptsoglou, Matthew Karlaftis
2014
International Journal of Transportation
This is the second part of a two-part survey investigating transportation network postdisaster planning and management. The first part focused on efforts and models for the estimation and assessment of post-disaster network performance (PDNP). This paper addresses the problem of decision-making and planning of post-disaster network operations (Post-Disaster Network Operations Planning -PDNOP). The paper reviews existing work in the field of post-disaster network planning, as realized by the
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... oyment of different operational actions for improving service provision by a surviving network. Three distinct types of operations are considered: evacuation, network design and emergency traffic management. The survey highlights important aspects of PDNOP, offers a detailed discussion on the strategies and parameters found in the literature and indicates potential future research directions. all kinds of network users, for example, establishing emergency and evacuation routes, managing traffic and restoring transportation infrastructures. As for the latter, it refers to actual emergency response activities which use the surviving transportation network for their own purposes; while these are also part of an overall disaster planning process, they do not focus on the operation of the transportation network but they rather exploit its services. As such, from a conceptual perspective, they are excluded from this review. The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 analyzes the problem of decision-making and planning of post-disaster network operations (post-disaster network operations planning -PDNOP). Existing work is classified with respect to specific problem characteristics including management tactics followed, the types of operations and actions employed and the analysis tools used. Special emphasis is put on the management strategies, parameters and constraints participating in each problem formulation. Section 3 discusses findings and Section 4 indicates paths for future research. Based on this framework, papers are classified according to their planning scope (operations, timing) and process (planning actions, operational strategies, analysis tools, objectives and parameters). Planning Scope This category focuses on the operations level (type of operations considered) and the timing for implementation and planning of post-disaster network operations. It sets general planning requirements for dealing with post-disaster network operations. 2.1.1. Type of Operations: Three generalized operation types are identified in the literature: emergency traffic management, network design and evacuation. Among them, evacuation has been widely investigated by researchers; relevant operations involve the movement of people out of harm zones (evacuation zones) to safety zones. As [5] explain, evacuation is not an "orderly" process, as uncertainties apply to the incident itself as well as demand, supply and other (operational) issues. Despite these uncertainties, a typical characteristic of all evacuation studies is the consideration of single direction of movement; traffic is only heading outbound, moving away from evacuation zones. However, most evacuation studies do not reserve any capacity for some inbound traffic by emergency vehicles. Emergency traffic management on the contrary, considers bi-directional movement of traffic. According to [32] , emergency traffic management aims at maintaining surviving network functionality to the best possible extent and attempts to maximize network performance by considering the needs generated by all network users, including evacuation and emergency response. However, despite its importance, studies focusing on traffic management in disaster situations are scarce: the review revealed only four relevant papers [67, 23, 22, 32] . Network design has also been widely studied in the literature, generally as an underlying planning sub-problem in cases of both evacuation and traffic management studies. This can be attributed to the fact that papers exploiting link change actions (for example lane reversal or contraflow actions) as parts of emergency management strategies, yield changes to the connectivity settings of the network and as such require the design of a new network. Implementation Timing: When planning and managing a surviving transportation network, the following phases should considered; these may be summarized as: (a) predisaster, (b) during-the-disaster and (c) after-the-disaster phases. In fact, the duration of the disaster can be considered negligible in relation to the time extending prior and after it and thus the during-the-disaster phase is often incorporated in the post-disaster phase. For instance, [32] distinguish the post-disaster phase into three sub-phases considering the different characteristics they exhibit. We argue that the value of this time fragmentation lies in the fact that during the different phases, the required operations may differ. Table 1 provides examples of disaster-related operations for each phase. The review revealed over seventy papers on PDNOP; these were broadly categorized according to the disaster management phase they refer to and the management tactics they follow, as well as their conceptual approach for addressing PDNOP. In this context, most papers belong to the domain of static operations' planning while only four attempt to integrate real-time management with planning. Indeed, there is a clear trend towards proactive planning as opposed to reactive management, despite arguments on the inability to capture the dynamic nature of disasters and their impacts. There were three types of operations considered: emergency traffic management, network design and evacuation. Evacuation studies are the largest part of the bibliography
doi:10.14257/ijt.2014.2.3.02
fatcat:l6du45eugjcizi5pkawpe7weym