Wildfire Evacuation Decision Support Tool

The objective of this project is to develop and validate an egress model that predicts the likelihood of successful evacuation and estimated length of time required. Appropriate metrics are introduced to measure “success” and also as input to risk-informed evacuation decisions and management. During wildfire households are advised to evacuate when the fire threat the nearby communities. The main problem with evacuation is poor planning due to highly uncertain behavior of the fire and human. Which results in unrealistic assumptions at the planning phase. Have a better understanding on fire and human behavior, helps to predict the effectiveness of evacuation scenarios more realistically.

In this project, we are developing a model to quantify the temporal and spatial distribution of the population under evacuation. The model simulates fire and human behavior over time, considering model and environmental uncertainties. The proposed model in this project, assist IOUs to compare the outcome of different evacuation plans and find the optimal plan based on their limitations and restrictions.