Vehicular Route Modeling for Safe Travel During Urban Flooding
General Material Designation
[Thesis]
First Statement of Responsibility
Kar, Armita
Subsequent Statement of Responsibility
Cova, Thomas J.
.PUBLICATION, DISTRIBUTION, ETC
Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.
The University of Utah
Date of Publication, Distribution, etc.
2019
GENERAL NOTES
Text of Note
35 p.
DISSERTATION (THESIS) NOTE
Dissertation or thesis details and type of degree
M.S.
Body granting the degree
The University of Utah
Text preceding or following the note
2019
SUMMARY OR ABSTRACT
Text of Note
Ensuring the safety of urban residents while traveling through flood events can be challenging. The goal of this research is to develop a method for identifying relatively safe travel routes during tropical storms and floods. The method considers four topographical and environmental factors: elevation, flood zones, rainfall, and flood level, as indicators of safety. The safest and fastest route use a weighted composite score of safety factors and travel time as impedance values, respectively. The balanced routes integrate both travel time and safety. The method incorporates turn penalties to ensure the resulting routes are simple and easy to communicate. The City of Friendswood, Texas in the Houston metropolitan area is used as a case study, as it was inundated during 2017 Hurricane Harvey. The study found variation in routes with different impedance factors and a Pareto efficient relationship among the safest, balanced, and fastest route for any origin-destination pair in the study area. Application of this method in route planning can provide information to drivers about the relative safety of urban travel routes to minimize losses, injuries, and rescue costs.