Residents along the Gulf Coast and in Southeast Louisiana often fleeing from hurricanes and fearing evacuation traffic can breathe a sigh of relief.Professors from the College of Engineering as well as faculty from the E. J. Ourso College of Business were recently awarded $833,316 for the next six years from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to run the Evacuation Models and Dynamics project.”The project is funding us so we can conduct large regional traffic models and scenario testing of New Orleans and look at the details of traffic flow within the city and as it disperses throughout the state,” said Brian Wolshon, civil and environmental engineering associate professor. “Once done, we will take all of our methods and processes and modeling expertise and apply it to the city of Houston.”Wolshon said the project is part of the Center for Natural Disasters, Coastal Infrastructure, and Emergency Management led by the University of North Carolina, which is the main center out of 13 designated Homeland Security Centers of Excellence.Wolshon, who serves as the principal investigator, said when there is an event like Hurricane Gustav, he and his graduate students grab data and information from the event to target analysis and learn better preparation methods for the next storm.He said a state-assisted evacuation program, which entailed moving people out of New Orleans who were unable to do so, was set up for Gustav.The overall evacuation plan, he said, not only incorporated the contra flow but also provided bus transportation and airlifts to bring evacuees to safety.”That’s a relatively new development because most of these plans came about after Katrina,” said Wolshon.He added other states have similar evacuation plans, which was evident when Hurricane Ike hit Texas during the weekend and people were airlifted out of Galveston and Houston to Austin.He said, however, there are a lot of technicalities that can make evacuations difficult, mainly people understanding and responding to the information they are given.”The key element to make contraflow work isn’t how long it is, but making sure evacuees get in and out of the lane sections while fully utilizing them so traffic doesn’t back up,” Wolshon said.  He said that was the problem for Gustav.”Gustav appears to have been much different than Katrina because Gustav passed to the west of New Orleans, and people in Baton Rouge were evacuating east towards Mobile, Florida and so forth,” Wolshon said.  “However, the contraflow plan that’s in place isn’t set up for that. The plan in place is set up to start facilitating movement to the north, and when we get storms that don’t necessarily fit well with the plan, then these problems can occur.”Hana Naghawi, civil engineering graduate student, said since Wolshon admitted her to work on the project a year and a half ago, she and other graduate students have tested numerous scenarios for transit evacuation and then come up with the best one.”I have been trying to simulate the transit evacuation of people out of New Orleans such as collecting data on the pick-up points, calculate the percentage of people in New Orleans that will use transit to evacuate and create a survey activity for people who are sick, needy and need assistance out of the city,” Naghawi said.Wolshon said the state needs to take a position where they don’t just have one plan, but maybe they have a plan with flexibility, allowing traffic to be routed in ways that are responsive to the storm condition.”The project is a very huge program, and I think it is going to be very helpful,” Naghawi said.—-Contact Louis Pelletteri III at [email protected]