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Real-Time GIS Assists South Carolina in Managing Hurricane Floyd EvacuationArticle provided by Intergraph CorporationAccessing the System On Monday, Sept. 13, SCDOT personnel began preparing the Hurricane Evacuation Decision Management System for utilization during Hurricane Floyd. At the time, the storm had received Category 4 status and was expected to hit Florida and South Carolina. With input from SCDOT, Intergraph had programmed the system to generate three charts from the traffic count data:
SCDOT personnel were also able to customize the charts to isolate traffic on specific routes, such as Interstate 26 (1-26) heading west across the state, or on particular metropolitan areas, such as Charleston, where many evacuation routes emerge toward inland destinations. Charts were presented in bar and line graph formats. "The traffic information lets the Governor know whether people are leaving in response to an evacuation order, as well as how many are leaving," said McElveen. "If he issues a mandatory or voluntary evacuation, the Governor must get a feel for how people are responding in case he should have to change his tactics." In addition to SCDOT headquarters, the password-protected system was accessed via the Internet at two command posts in Columbia -- one at the Governor's office and the other established by the state Emergency Preparedness Division. Both systems were staffed by SCDOT personnel. "Our job was to give the Emergency Preparedness Division and the Governor's office the information they needed to make decisions," said Mark Hunter, an Assistant State Maintenance Engineer in SCDOT's Highway Maintenance Office. "The challenge is to give it to them in the simplest terms." GeoMedia Web Map accomplished that because the Emergency Preparedness Division depended on Hunter for updates on traffic counts on the major evacuation routes after the Governor issued a mandatory evacuation order to low-lying areas at noon on Tuesday, Sept. 14. At the peak volume late that evening, 80,000 vehicles left Charleston in one hour. Hunter said the Emergency Preparedness Division staff was extremely interested in the newly available traffic count information along with the other data. He printed out numerous maps throughout Tuesday and Wednesday to track the movement of people. "The colonel of the state highway patrol was in the Governor's Command Center," said Kelvin Washington, an SCDOT Assistant Pavement Management Engineer who staffed the system at that location. "We kept track of every spot that was having slowdowns. We could get somebody on the ground, find out what the situation was, then get it cleared up as fast as possible so traffic could continue." By late afternoon on Tuesday, the system clearly showed what had most been feared -- traffic had come to a virtual stop on 1-26 outside Charleston because of volume congestion. This information contributed to the decision to clear eastbound 1-26 of all traffic and then re-open it to westbound traffic so that twice as many lanes could carry vehicles away from that part of the coast. The detour map proved valuable as well. It alerted authorities to the fact that some bridges across the Cooper River above North Charleston had been closed on Sept. 14 in anticipation of high winds. The alternate route was outlined in red. SCDOT added a note stating that the alternate route may be closed by 8 p.m. that night if high winds persisted. In addition, the real-time weather information would have been relied upon heavily during the storm had it not veered northward. Even though the hurricane passed by South Carolina, the system remained effective in the next few days. Contents
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