Real-time traffic evacuation management under multiple coordinated human-caused threats

The surface transportation system plays a crucial role in responding to human-caused disasters and other catastrophic incidents that have devastating impacts on the lives of population all over the world. ITS (Intelligent Transportation Systems) can play an important role not only in improving the operational efficiency of the transportation system, but also in enhancing its security and response to emergencies. In this paper, we propose new techniques for augmenting ITS to improve and support homeland security. In particular, we extend our existing work on developing a Smart Traffic Evacuation Management System (STEMS), by proposing new evacuation algorithms that can handle multiple incidents occurring in close proximity in a short time frame. This scenario is frequently encountered in terrorist attacks, as they are intended to create panic and terror. STEMS provides rapid and efficient response to human-caused threats and disasters, by dynamically generating evacuation plans based on incidents locations and scopes, and subsequently automatically controlling traffic lights to direct evacuation traffic in a safe manner. Furthermore, in case of multiple incidents, STEMS revises the current evacuation plans under execution in order to safely reroute traffic away from all incidents.