Jersey City / Newark Urban Area Security Initiative Regional Evacuation Planning Study

1. Jersey City / Newark Urban Area Security Initiative Regional Evacuation Planning Study

2. Purpose of Study • Develop a collaborative, cross-jurisdictional and multi-agency, all-hazards regional evacuation plan for the northern New Jersey UASI region.

3. Research Team • Voorhees Transportation Center • Transportation planning and policy • Outreach and public involvement • GIS and travel demand modeling • National Transit Institute • Emergency management and transportation security • Bloustein Center for Survey Research • Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering • Travel demand and evacuation modeling • Subject matter experts: • Mariana Leckner (Emergency Management consultant) • Richard Kelly (Original author of the Trans-Hudson Emergency transportation plan) • Marketing (TBD) • Traffic operations (TBD)

4. Goal and Objectives • Goal: Enhance the region’s evacuation planning capabilities • No “silver bullet” or absolute answers • Objectives: • Inventory assets and resources • Develop foundational understanding of how the region’s transportation network may function under different scenarios and assumptions • Identify critical vulnerabilities and impediments to successful evacuation, shelter-in-place and reentry/recovery efforts • Explore opportunities for coordination and collaboration • Identify needs related to collaborative arrangements/mutual aid • Identify training and education needs • Strengthen existing framework for on-going regional cooperation and collaboration

5. Planning process will address • Command, control and management issues • Evacuation routing and clearance time estimates • Evacuation of special needs populations • Coordination with mass care/sheltering and animal evacuation/sheltering plans • Cooperative and mutual-aid arrangements • Ingress/re-entry plans for the safe return of displaced populations

6. Scope of Work • Conduct literature review • Review modeling “state-of-the-practice” • Identify planning scenarios & assumptions (up to 10 scenarios) • Review county and local plans and annexes • Inventory evacuation-related assets and resources • Develop regional evacuation planning transportation model

7. Scope of Work (p.2) • Design and implement agency coordination and public participation plan • Interviews and listening sessions • UASI evacuation steering committee • Agency/stakeholder working group • Topical committees/working groups (as needed) • Region-wide resident survey • Disaster preparedness • Evacuation behavior • Information dissemination strategy • Public information/education plan & conduct public forums

8. Scope of Work (p.3) • Prepare plan and functional annexes • Command, control and management • Public notification and communication • Evacuation routing plans and corridor/mode-specific sub-plans • Plans/protocols for evacuating transportation-disadvantaged and special needs populations • Trans-Hudson evacuation • Cooperative arrangements and mutual aid agreements • Coordination with other target capability planning initiatives • Recovery/re-entry plans and protocols • Training and exercise plan • Procedures for updating the plan and model

9. Schedule

10. Challenges • Scale and scope of the region • Adapting traditional planning methods to a disaster planning process • “Worst-case” planning unfamiliar • Many hypothetical assumptions and unknowns • Emergency managers not accustomed to open, transparent planning process • Modeling the behavior of a population not accustomed to evacuation • Using conventional transportation planning tools to address an unconventional problem • Bridging the gap between cooperation and coordination • Cooperation is informal and built on personal relationships • Coordination is more formalized and built on institutional arrangements

11. Scale and scope of the region

12. Adapting traditional planning methods to disaster planning context • “Worst-case” is planning unfamiliar to most • Involves many hypothetical assumptions and unknowns • Emergency managers not accustomed to open, transparent planning process Source: www.foxnews.com/.../083105_Katrina2.jpg

13. Modeling evacuation behavior is complex Prepared by: Jill Grodkiewicz and Jon Carnegie

14. Using conventional transportation planning tools to address an unconventional problem • Regional model provides snapshot of how regional transportation systems may work • Macro-scale • Course grained network • Static O&D • Micro-scale simulation models provide greater local definition and dynamic travel assignments • No-notice events are a particular challenge • Shadow evacuation is also challenging to model North Jersey Regional Transportation Model (NJRTM)

15. Bridging the gap b/w cooperation and coordination • Cooperation • Coordination • Informal and built on personal relationships • Formalized and built on institutional arrangements

16. Discussion Thank you! Contact information: Jon A. Carnegie, AICP/PP, Executive Director Alan M. Voorhees Transportation Center Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey Tel: 2-6812 ext. 606 Email: carnegie@rci.rutgers.edu