Evacuation modeling and analysis is primarily concerned with identifying the types of trafficmovements associated with a disaster evacuation and evacuation routes, as well as the estimationof evacuation and clearance times. Thus, an efficient evacuation planning model has utmostimportance in determining evacuation times, identifying critical locations in the transportationnetwork, and assessing traffic operations strategies and evacuation policies. In this paper, avariety of scenarios such as a hurricane, toxic chemical leak, dirty bombs, and a nuclear eventare studied to understand the evacuation and highway network impacts of the evacuatingpopulation. Unlike corridor studies or bottleneck studies found in the literature, a network modelwith equilibrium assignment is employed. The scenarios are tested with a case study of NorthernNew Jersey, modeled using the North Jersey Regional Transportation Model – Enhanced(NJRTM-E); a large-scale travel demand model of the region. The results presented in this paperfocus on the impact of several assumptions and input data on the evacuation estimates, givingplanners an idea of the necessary considerations for evacuation planning with a modelingcontext. The experience with this study has shown that regional planning models are a suitabletool to model evacuation; however the modeler must be careful in their use. There are multiplemethodologies that can be used, and assumptions such as time of day, noticeo-notice,passengers per car, and background traffic in the network have wide-ranging effects.
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