A hurricane evacuation management decision support system (EMDSS)

This article describes the challenges confronting local authorities who must decide if and when to initiate evacuations from tropical cyclones. This problem can be decomposed into the behavior of the hurricane that is relevant to evacuation and the behavior of evacuees that is relevant to the hurricane. The uncertain behavior of these two systems can be modeled in an evacuation management decision support system (EMDSS). The hurricane EMDSS described here displays information about the minimum, most, and maximum probable evacuation time estimates (ETEs) in comparison to the earliest, most, and latest probable estimated times of arrival (ETAs) for storm conditions. In addition, EMDSS calculates the cost of false positive (the economic cost of an evacuation) and false negative (lives lost in a late evacuation) decision errors. EMDSS is being used in experiments to assess different information displays, team compositions, community characteristics, and hurricane scenarios. In addition, it will be used in training and actual hurricane operations. Finally, definition of the program's requirements has identified further research needed to build a better empirical base for its input data.