SCC-CIVIC-PG Track B: An Integrated Scenario-based Hurricane Evacuation Management Tool to Support Community Preparedness

随着飓风的逼近，应急管理人员必须确定何时何地发布官方疏散命令。它需要整合大量不确定的、不断变化的信息，以便在短时间内在压力下做出相应的决策，而且风险很高。现在有机会利用最近的研究--特别是综合情景疏散(ISE)工具--来帮助应对这一挑战。该团队将ISE工具设计为在特定飓风接近美国时运行。当在某个时间点运行时，它会生成一组应急计划，并根据飓风的演变情况定义实施每个计划的情况。每个计划都包括关于是否为每个地理疏散区域发布疏散命令的建议，如果是的话，何时发布。尽管新技术有希望，但从研究到实践也带来了挑战。因此，第一阶段的目标是：(1)确定新工具及其产出如何支持应急管理人员的自然决策过程；(2)对该工具进行需求评估；(3)增进对灾害管理社区创新的理解。第2阶段的目标是为北卡罗来纳州实施基于ISE的决策支持工具的操作原型。应急管理器合作伙伴将确保该工具具有实际用途；研究人员将确保其反映最佳科学；行业合作伙伴将通过在其平台上托管该工具来确保其影响是可持续的。ISE工具使用多阶段随机规划模型来提供建议疏散顺序树和对该建议集的绩效评估。该工具的好处是，它提供了一个具有不确定性的综合危险评估，其中包括风暴潮、风浪、潮汐、河流流量、内陆洪水和风的影响；它明确地平衡了将风险和旅行时间降至最低的相互竞争的目标；它提供了一个在飓风演变范围内稳健的对冲良好的解决方案；它具有适应性，利用了事件期间减少不确定性的价值。第一阶段将包括关键利益攸关方的重点小组，以确定创新进程；需求评估；以及下一阶段的分析和规划。在第二阶段，我们将(1)通过将工具移动到GPU平台并利用并行的机会来使工具运行更快、更容易；(2)开发交互式图形用户界面；以及(3)通过增加对制度化弱势群体的处理来改进建模。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

As a hurricane approaches, emergency managers must determine when and where to issue official evacuation orders. It requires integrating large amounts of uncertain, changing information to make consequential decisions in a short time frame under pressure, and the stakes are high. An opportunity exists to leverage recent research—in particular, the Integrated Scenario-based Evacuation (ISE) tool—to help meet that challenge. This team designed the ISE tool to be run for a particular hurricane as it approaches the U.S. When run at a point in time, it generates a set of contingency plans and defines the circumstances under which to implement each, depending on how the hurricane evolves. Each plan includes recommendations about whether or not to issue an evacuation order for each geographic evacuation zone, and if so, when.While the new technology has promise, moving from research to practice brings its own challenges. The objectives of Stage 1, therefore, are to: (1) Determine how the new tool and its output can support emergency managers’ natural decision-making process; (2) Conduct a needs assessment for the tool; and (3) Advance understanding of community innovation in disaster management. The Stage 2 objective is to implement an operational prototype of the ISE-based decision support tool for North Carolina. The emergency manager partners will ensure the tool is of practical use; the researchers will ensure it reflects the best science; and the industry partner will ensure its impact is sustainable by hosting it on their platform.The ISE tool uses a multi-stage stochastic programming model to provide a tree of recommended evacuation orders and a performance evaluation for that set of recommendations. Benefits of the tool are that it provides an integrated hazard assessment with uncertainty that includes the effects of storm surge, wind waves, tides, river discharge, inland flooding, and wind; it explicitly balances competing objectives of minimizing risk and travel time; it offers a well-hedged solution robust under the range of hurricane evolutions; and it is adaptive, leveraging the value of decreasing uncertainty during an event. Stage 1 will include focus groups of key stakeholders to determine the process of innovation; a needs assessment; and analysis and planning for the next stage. In Stage 2, we will (1) make the tool faster and easier to run by moving it to a GPU platform and exploiting opportunities for parallelization; (2) develop an interactive graphical user interface; and (3) improve the modeling by adding treatment of institutionalized vulnerable populations.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.