Evacuation Routing Using Public Transportation Around the Statue of Unity

In recent years, natural disasters such as floods and earthquakes have become more frequent, directly impacting man-made structures, particularly those in vulnerable areas such as hilly terrain. The Statue of Unity (SoU), located in Ekta Nagar, Gujarat, is one such structure that attracts a large number of visitors every day. The SoU aims to eliminate private vehicles in favor of public transportation (buses) on its premises. Proper evacuation route planning is important to maximize the number of people evacuated in a reasonable amount of time to a safe zone. This paper uses the microscale traffic simulation model SUMO (Simulation of Urban MObility) to develop evacuation routing strategies using buses for the SoU. Three distinct route strategies were designed, each encompassing multiple round-trip routes to and from a designated evacuation point. Within each route, a specified number of buses service several bus stops. The distribution of buses along these routes is determined by demand, with a fixed stopping time at each bus stop. Each strategy features unique route plans with a different number of routes. The effectiveness of these strategies was analyzed under two disaster scenarios: one where all roads are clear for evacuation and another where some roads are partially damaged, leading to a reduction in speed. A total of six different cases, combining the three route strategies with the two disaster scenarios, were thus analyzed. The efficiency of each strategy was analyzed by measuring the 90th percentile evacuation time, average waiting time of evacuees at each bus stop, and bus utilization rate during evacuation.