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South Carolina DOT (Hurricane Evacuation Solution), United States

South Carolina DOT Decision Makers Have Up-to-the-Minute Evacuation Information

Agency can quickly and efficiently analyze weather conditions and recommend the best evacuation routes

When Hurricane Charley made landfall August 13, 2004, on the southwest coast of Florida, it delivered a seven-foot storm surge and winds estimated at 145 miles per hour. As the storm continued to track northeast across the state toward the Atlantic Ocean, threatening to bring its high winds and flash flooding to the East Coast, officials in the South Carolina Department of Transportation (SCDOT) paid attention. Charley was a powerful storm, and they understood its potential to regenerate its strength over the Atlantic. As the storm approached, South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford declared a state of emergency and ordered residents and vacationers in two coastal counties to evacuate.

Hurricane warnings and the forced evacuation of thousands of coastal residents could quickly lead to chaos if not managed efficiently. Roadways heading away from the coast have limited capacity, decision makers need up-to-the-minute information to determine which route is best, and, on top of all that, there’s not a minute to lose. South Carolinians rely on the DOT to analyze conditions quickly and accurately and help them move to safety.

The state selected Intergraph’s enterprisewide transportation Web portals solution to develop the Hurricane Evacuation Decision Support Solution - a system for integrating multiple data sources and distributing geospatial information and other digital data on the Web. Beginning with Hurricane Floyd in 1999, the SCDOT staff could survey evacuation routes, vehicle counts, road closures, and weather conditions simultaneously.

The evacuation system has been enhanced with Intergraph’s GeoMedia Web solutions that incorporate Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG). The new World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standard for Web-based vector graphics, SVG was recently incorporated into GeoMedia WebMap. SVG is used in many applications, including Web graphics, user interfaces, graphics interchange, print and hardcopy output, animation, mobile applications, and high-quality design.

With the enhancements to the SCDOT Hurricane Evacuation Decision Support Solution, decision makers can access near real-time information in the form of graphs, maps, and spreadsheets for analyzing road conditions. They can compare current traffic trends with normal loads, look for traffic blockages, and determine what action to take. Officials have rapid access to traffic volumes, speed data, evacuation route and detour maps, traffic cameras, current weather data, and other pertinent traffic information to help them analyze conditions in real time and communicate with highway managers and the general public using the Web and the news media.

The readings from automatic traffic recorders (ATRs) can be compiled immediately, displaying near real-time data as it compares with an hour before, the last six hours, or the last 14 days. The ATR reports provide such critical information as speed of the traffic, number of vehicles per hour, and percent of capacity reached. If a road has reached its capacity and the traffic is starting to slow down, officials can use the reports to determine the next step. If necessary, they can close the road to coast-bound traffic and use all lanes for evacuation. Or they can re-route some of the traffic to alternate roads.

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