Title

An interdisciplinary agent-based multimodal wildfire evacuation model: Critical decisions and life safety

Abstract

This research applies an interdisciplinary agent-based model (ABM) of wildfire evacuation to the devastating 2018 wildfire in Mati, Greece, where the second-deadliest wildfire of the 21st century took place. The developed model integrates the natural hazard system (wildfire propagation) with the sociotechnical response system comprising social (population response) and engineered (transportation network and shelter location) components. The research objective is to investigate the effects on wildfire casualties of the risk area population's decisions about (1) whether to leave and how long to wait (i.e., departure time); (2) what transportation mode to use (e.g., walking or driving); and (3) how fast to travel. Analysis of several evacuation scenarios shows that the absence of children, multi-modal travel, staged evacuation, and increased shelter capacity lead to a more successful wildfire evacuation. These analyses can help emergency managers improve the effectiveness of their communities' wildfire evacuation plans.

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Speaker Bio

Mohammad Rayeedul Kalam Siam worked is a PhD student in the School of Civil and construction Engineering at Oregon State University (OSU). At OSU, Siam is conducting interdisciplinary research on smart and resilient urban systems using a network paradigm that bridges the boundaries between civil engineering, network science, and social science. His research works have been sponsored by PacTrans, the National Science Foundation, and Oregon Department of Transportation. He has a total of 15 publications (9 peer-reviewed journals and 6 peer-reviewed conference papers) with topics focusing on an array of topics: traffic flow modelling, connected and/or autonomous vehicles, traffic safety, infrastructure network resilience, and human mobility. He has been contributing to the Transportation Engineering community as a reviewer for Transportation Research Record (TRR): Journal of the Transportation Research Board, Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives, and Journal of Traffic and Transportation Engineering.

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