Emergency Evacuation of Tehran City: Simulation results

Tehran is a strategic city in a wide metropolitan area and it is the capital of Iran.Large-scale disasters such as earthquakes in such a city causes many casualtiesand economical damages. One of the most effective risk mitigation actions insuch disasters is emergency evacuation. This paper evaluates the dynamics of thevehicular traffic of Tehran under an evacuation condition. The main arterials ofthe city of Tehran are simulated by a macroscopic traffic flow simulation model(FastLane). The dynamics of traffic in the network are assessed by means of theNetwork Fundamental Diagram under different loading durations. Simulationresults confirm the effect of loading duration and spatial spread of density onnetwork performance. As was previously suggested in the literature, increasingloading duration leads to higher average network flow in the recovery phasecompared to maximum network flow in the loading phase. Furthermore,simulation results demonstrate a clear decrease of average velocity by increasingthe spatial spread of the densities in the network. These results can be used whenmaking decisions regarding emergency evacuation plans for the city of Tehran.

Keywords:

Tehran , Evacuation , simulation , Network Fundamental Diagram