Support for preventive mass evacuation planning in urban areas

This article presents an approach for planning mass evacuations in the event of major disasters that can be forecast at least 24 hours in advance. It also describes an evacuation management support tool based on this approach. We focused on coastal and estuary towns exposed to storm tide flooding a risk that is increasing as the sea level rises as a result of climate change. This scenario is one of several being studied in the European Union FP7 project THESEUS, in which our approach will be tested at several coastal and estuary sites in Europe. The initial results for the Gironde estuary (the French pilot site) and the Bordeaux urban area show that by a translating expert analysis into a multiparameter assessment with the ArcGIS geographic information system, it is possible of optimize evacuee management and evaluate the impact of strategic decision criteria such as vertical evacuation (confinement) and/or horizontal evacuation (departure from the zone at risk).