Assessing the Vulnerability of Evacuation Plans via Critical Element Detection

A principal characteristic that an emergency evacuation plan must have is to be robust with respect to possible disruptions over the infrastructure network. We propose a mathematical formulation aimed to detect the set of critical elements (roads, bridges, intersections, etc.) of an evacuation plan. Identifying these elements is of importance, as they can be reinforced to prevent a collapse during an evacuation, or they can be used to analyze alternative routes or contingency plans. For instance, in the context of Superstorm Sandy, that could have extended to detecting paths that were critical to the evacuation plan, so as to assess the plan robustness and mitigate the impact of potential failures.