[Editors] MIT hurricane software could help save lives

[Jen Hirsch]

For Immediate Release
THURSDAY, AUG. 28, 2008

Contact: Jen Hirsch, MIT News Office
e: jfhirsch at mit.edu, t: 617-253-1682

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Saving lives through smarter hurricane evacuations
-- MIT student’s software seen aiding emergency officials’ decision- 
making
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CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Hundreds of lives and hundreds of millions of  
dollars could potentially be saved if emergency managers could make  
better and more timely critical decisions when faced with an  
approaching hurricane. Now, an MIT graduate student has developed a  
computer model that could help do just that.

Michael Metzger’s software tool, created as part of the research for  
his PhD dissertation, could allow emergency managers to better decide  
early on whether and when to order evacuations — and, crucially, to  
do so more efficiently by clearing out people in stages. The tool  
could also help planners optimize the location of relief supplies  
before a hurricane hits.

By analyzing data from 50 years of hurricanes and detailed  
information on several major ones, and by comparing the information  
available at various times as a hurricane approached with data from  
the actual storm’s passage, Metzger said he was able to produce  
software that provides a scientifically consistent framework to plan  
for an oncoming hurricane. His approach uses the best available  
hurricane track models developed over the years, but even these can  
be wrong half of the time — a degree of uncertainty that further  
complicates the job for local emergency managers.

Because many of these managers have never had to confront the life-or- 
death realities of an approaching hurricane, they need a consistent  
analytical framework to consider the sequence of complex decisions  
that they need to make. For example, a poorly planned evacuation  
could cause roadway gridlock and trap evacuees in their cars —  
leaving them exposed to the dangers of inland flooding. As another  
example, ordering too many precautionary evacuations could lead to  
complacency among local residents, who might then ignore the one  
evacuation advisory that really matters.

“All in all, this is a complex balancing act,” Metzger says.

The concept of evacuating an area in stages — focusing on different  
categories of people rather than different geographical locations —  
is one of the major innovations to come out of Metzger’s work, since  
congestion on evacuation routes has been a significant problem in  
some cases, such as hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Metzger suggests  
that, for example, the elderly might be evacuated first, followed by  
tourists, families with children, and then the remaining population.  
The determination of the specific categories and their sequence could  
be determined based on the demographics of the particular area.

By spacing out the evacuation of different groups over a period of  
about two days, he says, the process would be more efficient, while  
many traditional systems of evacuating a given location all at once  
can and have caused serious congestion problems. With his system,  
officials would get the information needed to “pull the trigger  
earlier, and phase the evacuation,” he says, and thus potentially  
save many lives. Coincidentally, during the recent hurricane Fay in  
Florida, a modest version of a selective evacuation was implemented  
successfully when tourists were asked to leave while residents  
remained in place.

Other factors that could help to make evacuations more effective, he  
says, include better planning in the preparation of places for  
evacuees to go to, making sure buses and other transportation are  
ready to transport people, and preparing supplies in advance at those  
locations.


Metzger, who is a research assistant in the MIT Engineering Systems  
Division’s Center for Engineering Systems Fundamentals, and a PhD  
student in the Operations Research Center, received a second-place  
award out of more than 100 entries from the U.S. Department of  
Homeland Security earlier this year for the work. He has already  
discussed his conclusions with federal and state emergency officials,  
who said they are interested in adopting the new methodology. The  
hope is that they will initially use it side by side with their  
existing procedures, in order to track exactly how the results would  
compare, Metzger says. It is possible that his methods, implemented  
as a visually appealing computer program, could be used as a “cockpit  
training tool” for local emergency managers.

His adviser Richard Larson, Mitsui Professor of Engineering Systems  
and of Civil and Environmental Engineering, says Metzger’s approach  
“embodies elements of engineering, management and the social  
sciences.” For example, while much of the work was strictly  
mathematical in the analysis of decision-making strategies, there was  
also a strong component of sociology involved in evaluating people’s  
responses to false-alarm evacuations.

Metzger has discussed the work with officials in South Africa, and  
also received an award from the National Science Foundation’s  
graduate student conference. He plans to refine the software further  
over the course of the next year or so.

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Written by, David Chandler, MIT News Office