evacSys: A Cloud-Based Service for emergency evacuation

Abstract— Moreover, the report indicated that, since the 1990s, average annual damages have risen from $20 billion to approximately $100 billion USD, and the upward trend in such losses is expected to continue. Protecting life in any disaster is a multifaceted problem faced by citizens and by local, state, and federal governments. Selecting safer routes away from disaster zones is a major aspect of evacuation planning and is critically important for saving lives during a disaster. Generally, transportation departments plan road networks by considering the traffic demands at busy hours, such as at the beginning or end of the work day. However, it is difficult to predict traffic volumes during disaster scenarios, when large groups of people try to evacuate the site as quickly as possible. The unavailability of proper evacuation plans can thus lead to road congestion and traffic jams, which can in turn result in lost human lives. An overview of how cloud computing can be effectively utilized for route recommendation in emergency evacuation scenarios. We discuss the architecture of EvacSys, a cloud-based route recommendation service that leverages the power of cloud computing to compute routes that are least congested, at minimum risk, and of shortest length. EvacSys obtains real-time data from an intelligent transportation system (ITS) and computes routes for evacuees < final year projects >