Richard J. Carroll Memorial Lecture in Civil Engineering: Linda Nozick

Description

The Department of Civil Engineering is pleased to announce that Dr. Linda Nozick, director and professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Cornell University, will give the annual Richard J. Carroll Memorial Lecture. Her talk, "Optimizing the Issuance of Evacuation Orders Under Evolving Hurricane Threat," will discuss a bi-level programming model to optimize the issuance of evacuation orders with explicit consideration of: 1) the highly uncertain evolution of the storm, and 2) the complexity of the behavioral reaction to evolving storm conditions.

Hurricanes cause powerful winds, storm surge, and inland streamflow flooding that can put many lives at risk. Forecasters use a collection of atmospheric models to estimate how a hurricane will evolve over time and use a suite of storm surge and hydrological models to determine water levels. However, these forecasts are subject to substantial uncertainty, especially more than a day or two in advance. Hence the task of deciding who should receive an evacuation order and when is very difficult. If the decision is postponed too long, evacuees may encounter hazardous conditions as they evacuate. Conversely, if the decision is made prematurely, many people will leave needlessly and may encounter more risk in the evacuation than if they had remained in their homes. This talk will discuss a bi-level programming model to optimize the issuance of evacuation orders with explicit consideration of (i) the highly uncertain evolution of the storm, and (ii) the complexity of the behavioral reaction to evolving storm conditions. A solution procedure based on progressive hedging is developed. A realistic case study for the eastern portion of the state of North Carolina is presented.