Optimization of Equitable Routes to Critical Facilities After Flood Events

• Mina Gorani, Civil Engineering, University of Virginia

• Shangjia Dong, Civil & Environmental Engineering, University of Delaware

Flood-induced disruptions frequently disconnect communities from access to critical facilities. This study uses an optimization model to prioritize roads for retrofication to provide communities with equitable access to hospitals after a flood event. Using communities around Dover, DE as a case study, their weighted travel time for access to the closest hospital is minimized. The CDC’s Social Vulnerability Index is utilized to quantify the weight of each census tract for four major categories: Socioeconomic Status, Household Characteristics, Racial & Ethnic Minority Status, and Housing Type & Transportation. Using these four categories as weights, the differences in roads to retrofit reveal the conflicting needs within each community. Moreover, the model helps identify the common roads across all four retrofication strategies and the minimum restoration required for all communities to have hospital access. Analysis on the Dover testbed revealed that across all communities only 1.25%  of network roadway require restoration for community-wide access, and the greatest conflicting needs exist between communities that are socioeconomically vulnerable and those that are vulnerable due to their housing type and transportation access. Our proposed model can serve as a beneficial tool for emergency management planners to provide equitable access and targeted infrastructure protection. Future work could address expanding the model’s comprehensiveness with larger testbed areas, consideration of hospital capacity, greater processing power to include local roads, and factoring in other critical facilities such as grocery stores.