Transportation Planning for Floods – Phase II

A major problem associated with flood events is that many roads become impassible or passable at a highly reduced speed. The first year of our project was focused on developing a decision support tool to reflect the impact of flooding on roads and quickly compute new routes for potential flooding scenarios. We were able to establish new measures that reflect the accessibility of different locations after flooding events. In our second year, we propose to use this accessibility measure to help make location and delivery decisions for a disaster. Much of the disaster relief literature looks at issues such as how to locate temporary emergency supply points, allocate limited resources among these supply points, and make deliveries to those affected but without considering the impact of the disaster itself. The team also plans to add to their decision support tool to incorporate the use of real time flooding data. This would allow users across the state of Iowa to understand how their routes need to be changed based on updated conditions and road closures. This project would involve the participation of one graduate student and two PIs. The two PIs include an expert in operations research and disaster logistics, and an expert in flooding and informatics systems. The team believes the results of this work would be useful for groups such as governments and NGOs, as well as private citizens, trying to make decisions during flood events, such as evacuation planning, disaster preparedness, and emergency response.

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