National UASI and Homeland Security, June 2013

1. Advances in Modeling, Simulation, and
Analysis in Support of Emergency
Management and Planning
Presented By
Barry Ezell
4-7 June 2013
National Homeland Security Conference – 2013 Los Angeles,
California, United States of America
Homeland Security Begins with Hometown Security
VIRGINIA MODELING ANALYSIS AND
SIMULATION CENTER

2. Overview
 Presentation describes project that represent advances in
all-hazards emergency planning and exercise support
– Real time evacuation planning model: RtePM

3. Motivation
 Limited M&S in support of local, regional, and State level
emergency planning and management
– Table top exercises
– Evacuation planning
– During an event
 Grant funding decline and transition to hard funding
 Personal experience, U.S. Army during drawdown 900K to
460K, 1992-2000

4. Live Virtual and Constructive
Simulation
Live Simulation and Training
Virtual Simulation and Training
1992-2013 Post Iraq & Afghanistan
Constructive Simulation and Training
1984 - 1991
On par or better than U.S. military
Improving
Poor
900K to 460K
Base Realignment and Closure

5. Three down, one to go…
AIR FORCE Magazine / January 2013. 11. Source: “Planning for a Deep Defense Drawdown—Part I,” Clark A. Murdock

6. Estimates vehicle traffic evacuation
times in the event of a natural and
man-made disasters.
Behavioral Data
Population
Demographics
(Customizable)
Route
Capacity
Evacuation
Routes
Destinations
(Customizable)
User Entered
Road Network
Modifications
Calculated Evacuation TimeRtePM
# vehicles
evacuating
Network
Information
evacuation plan
feedback for scenario analysis

7. RtePM Background
 Originally funded by DHS Science & Technology
 Initial prototype - Johns Hopkins University Applied
Physics Laboratory and University of Maryland
 Opportunity: State leadership sees value in emergency
planners and managers ability to estimate vehicle traffic
evacuation times in the event of a natural and man-made
hazard event.
 Technology transferred to Old Dominion University’s
VMASC - August 2012
– Charge: bring to full operating capability; deploy to Commonwealth
and Nation; begin training users; improve capability via stakeholder
input
– Validate the model so all may use with trust

8. Whole Community
 RtePM helps to lead to a deeper understanding of the
unique evacuation infrastructure challenges for a diverse
community
 Identify community evacuation capabilities and needs
 Understand the real-life safety challenges to facilitate a
more effective prevention, protection, mitigation, response,
and recovery activities
 RtePM supports PPD-8 Core Capabilities
– Planning, Operational Coordination activities, Public Information,
Critical Transportation, Infrastructures Systems, Situational
Assessment, Community Resilience, etc.

9. Overview and Applications
 RtePM
– Online, GIS-based evacuation tool
– Estimates evacuation clearance times from areas drawn on a map
– Automatically ingests road network (NAVTEQ®) data and population data (US
census)
– Six steps with default settings or made more detailed with numerous user options
 Applications
– Large/medium/small scale evacuations
– Natural disasters (hurricanes, wildfires, etc.)
– Terrorists attacks (toxic gas, dirty bombs, etc.)
– Nuclear Power Plant evacuation planning
– Flood plans for dams
– Hazardous materials incidents
– Special events/sporting events with large crowds

10. RtePM Capabilities and Features
 Capabilities
– Vehicle evacuation time estimates
– Deterministic or Probabilistic simulation results
– Overlay plumes from HOTSPOT and Aloha models
– Identify evacuation areas and affected roadways
– Traffic model can identify probable areas of congestion and assess
accident/incident impacts
 Features
– Shadow evacuations
– Phased and multi-day evacuations
– Varying response times and participation rates
– Seasonal population changes
– Road network modifications (closures, contraflow, etc.)
– Shelter use, including refuges of last resort
– Three background traffic levels
– Four accident/incident levels

11. User Hardware and Software
Requirements
 Hardware
– Basic Personal Computer (Apple®, PC, and Linux® acceptable)
– Internet access (high speed broadband)
– Mozilla Firefox® , Chrome® , Internet Explorer® , Safari®
compatible
– Adobe® Flash
 Software
– developed using free/open source software
– Web based front end using ESRI ArcGIS API for Flex
communicating to a Java J2EE back end
– GeoServer as the GIS server
– Postgres with geospatial extensions (PostGIS) as database

12. Key Considerations
 Population:
– Area to evacuate
– Number of people (participation rate)
– People per vehicle (defaults to 2.5, user selectable)
 Road Network:
– Road category (I.e. highway, major arterial, etc.)
– Number of lanes
– Length of road segment
– Free-flow speed of road segment
– Nodes where vehicles enter road network
– Destination nodes for evacuation
 Behavioral:
– Participation rate
– Response curve

13. Access and Sign in
 http://rtepm.vmasc.odu.edu
 Users can create a personal account or log in as a guest
 Personal accounts have user created passwords and created
scenarios are saved in a private folder (can be made public)
 Guest scenarios are saved in a public folder

14. Demonstration
Key points of contact –
Mike Robinson (rmrobins@odu.edu)
Peter Foytik (pfoytik@odu.edu)

15. Thank You
Barry Ezell
bezell@odu.edu
757.831.3632