Modeling a contraflow evacuation method for tropical cyclone evacuations in Nueces County, Texas
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Modeling a contraflow evacuation method for tropical cyclone evacuations in Nueces County, Texas Adam E. Clark1 · Ronald R. Hagelman III1 · Richard W. Dixon1 Received: 19 June 2019 / Accepted: 3 June 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Each year in the USA, hurricanes threaten millions of coastal residents. These storms have the potential to devastate areas with heavy rain, damaging winds, severe flooding and strong storm surge. These geophysical phenomena are particularly dangerous along the low-lying coastal zones of the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic coast. The threat of these storms prompts many coastal areas to create disaster plans which often include evacuation strategies to help guide area residents to safety before a storm makes landfall. This research examined the prescribed contraflow evacuation plan for Nueces County, Texas in an effort to model what an evacuation may look like during a major tropical cyclone landfall like the near miss of Hurricane Harvey during the 2017 hurricane season. ArcGIS was used to route thirteen potential evacuation routes out of Nueces County. These routes were then used to simulate evacuations under “optimal,” “expected” and “worst-case” scenarios. It was determined that, while contraflow evacuations can cause severe traffic congestion and lead to long evacuation times, they have the potential to effectively evacuate an area under both “optimal” and “expected” conditions. The results of this analysis add to the growing body of research focused on leveraging geographic information systems to improve localscale evacuation planning. Keywords Contraflow · Evacuation · Hazards · Tropical cyclone · GIS · Hurricane · Texas · Corpus Christi · Nueces County
1 Introduction The impacts of our rapidly changing climate have prompted many communities and government agencies to re-examine existing policies and procedures regarding coastal land use, resource and energy conservation, and disaster management. Focusing on disaster * Adam E. Clark [email protected] Ronald R. Hagelman III [email protected] Richard W. Dixon [email protected] 1
Texas State University, San Marcos, TX, USA
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management, specifically that of US Gulf Coast mass evacuation policies, local governments must regularly examine existing plans to ensure their future effectiveness against the continuing threat of major tropical cyclones. Research suggests that rising global temperatures could have several negative impacts to the densely populated coastal communities including increased sea levels, changes to the frequency and intensity of tropical cyclones and acceleration of coastal erosion, among others (Frey et al. 2010; Mousavi et al. 2011; Warner and Tissot 2012). These environmental drivers, along with increasing urbanization of our coastlines, will require more large-scale evacuations in the future. Therefore, modeling these evacuation plans, in an effort to improve their efficacy prior to their deployment, has become a paramount concern for many coasta
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