KOTI - Korea Transport institute

Natural disasters such as earthquakes and flooding result in massive loss in the form of not only human fatalities but also buildings, houses, and road infrastructure. Natural disasters continue worldwide, and damage is still severe despite the advance of disaster countermeasures. In particular, earthquakes result in massive fatalities and property damage as forecasting earthquakes in advance is almost impossible. In 2016, frequent concentrated earthquakes occurred in the Byeongsangbuk province, and the maximum magnitude recorded was 5.8 on the Richter scale. Although the impact of this earthquake did not result in fatalities or severe infrastructure damage, the concern that a worse earthquake is likely to happen exits as the frequent earthquakes in the Gyeongsangbuk province prove that the fault lines in this region are still active. In response to the earthquakes, many govermental organizations in charge of relief and evacuations have developed plans and manuals, but the roles of transportation and traffic management are especially important because this can contribute to the evacuation of people and resilience from damage. This is even more likely in a severe situation in which residents need to be evacuated.
This research proposed an evacuation traffic management strategy using public transit (i.e., buses), which could be managed by govermental bodies in an emergency situation since many bus companies are publicly financed in part. To this end, this research established principles i) to select evacuation routes that are resistant to earthquakes, ii) to appoint bases of evacuation, and iii) to utilize bus fleets in an evacuation. In addition, a quantitative analysis was conducted using a case-study in the city of Gyeongju, in order to investigate and prove the effectiveness of the proposed evacuation traffic management strategies. Therefore, the time required for evacuations using public buses and passenger vehicles, the number of buses required for the evacuation demand, and an optimum mode share of buses and passenger vehicles were investigated. Future studies and recommendations for a comprehensive evacuation traffic management strategy were also provided after concluding statements.
This study is to mitigate damage from natural disasters by providing traffic management strategies, and investigated the measures for evacuating residents from impacted areas to safe areas.
It is expected that the strategies and the quantitative analysis results provided by this research will be of help to enhance evacuation plans when natural disasters occur.