Emergency zone design and staged evacuation planning for the UBC Vancouver campus : a traffic microsimulation study

There has been limited attention to examining how different emergency-zone release orders affect evacuation performance, particularly in a multi-use university campus setting that includes academic, residential, commercial, and other land uses. This study develops an emergency zoning plan for the UBC Vancouver campus and evaluates the performance of zone-based vehicle evacuation strategies using traffic microsimulation. Seven emergency zones were designed based primarily on major roads, neighbourhood boundaries, and land use. Campus vehicular evacuation demand was estimated, and a model of campus was developed using VISSIM. The model was used to compare simultaneous and staged strategies for a short-notice whole-campus evacuation, as well as a partial-campus evacuation. The results show that staged evacuation generally improves evacuation mobility outcomes compared with simultaneous evacuation. All staged scenarios reduce network and emergency-zone average travel times and the extent of severe delay, although the level of improvement varies based on zone release order. At the network level, orders that distribute evacuation demand spatially across stages, and release peripheral zones in the first stage, generally have shorter clearance times and average travel times. At the emergency-zone level, evacuating vehicles generally experience shorter travel times when ordered to leave at an earlier stage. Staging also reduces the magnitude or duration of vehicle queues at several critical bottlenecks, although some locations remain congested across all strategies. Persistent gridlock occurs in some simulation runs and affects network completion and clearance-time results. These measures are therefore considered together with travel time, relative delay, and queue measures when evaluating scenario performance. Overall, the study demonstrates how emergency zoning and staged evacuation can support campus evacuation planning and the findings provide a basis for prioritizing emergency zones, organizing emergency services, and identifying where additional traffic-management measures may be needed. Although focused on vehicle performance, the results of the study may also help to inform other modes of evacuation transportation including evacuation shuttle service pick up locations and routes.