Bus based evacuation serves carless population and helps reduce congestion during evacuations. Due to the complexity of the problem, the literature in this area uses bi-level approach, where in the upper level the bus routing decisions are made, and in the lower level, changes of traffic dynamics are captured.  Other papers develop Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) extensions to provide optimal bus routing solutions where the congestion is given exogenously.  This proposed research develops a single-level dynamic bus routing problem that determines the optimal bus routing with tespect to dynamics of traffic and congestion, that minimizes the total evacuation time experienced by all evacuees.  By incorporating the interaction between the demand for automobile uses and bus evacuation planning and its effect on traffic dynamics, we can plan a more efficient and effective bus-based evacuation service operations during the time-sensitive, resource-restricted, and highly-congested evacuation processes.

The proposed research includes tasks of (1) model development, (2) computational methods, and (3) case study.