Model reference adaptive control framework for real-time traffic management under emergency evacuation

Recent natural or man-made disasters around the world have provided compelling evidence that transportation system plays a crucial role in the emergency evacuation and have stressed the need for effective evacuation traffic management to maximize the utilization of the transportation system and to minimize fatalities and losses. This paper presents a model reference adaptive control (MRAC) framework for real-time traffic management under emergency evacuation. Distinct from the well-studied evacuation planning, real-time traffic management for evacuation aims to dynamically guide (control) traffic flow under evacuation in such a way that certain system objective (e.g., minimization of fatalities or property losses) could be achieved. The proposed framework is based on both dynamic network modeling techniques and adaptive control theory, by considering the traffic network under evacuation as a dynamic system. First, a prescriptive dynamic traffic assignment model is applied to predict, in a short-term and rolling-horizon manner, the desired traffic states based on certain system optimal objectives. This model will serve as a reference point for the adaptive control. Then, the adaptive control system integrates these desired states and the current prevailing traffic conditions collected via the sensing system to produce real-time traffic control schemes. Finally, these traffic control schemes are implemented in the field to guide the real-world traffic flow to evolve towards the desired states. Simulation studies provided in this paper show that the proposed framework based on MRAC can significantly improve the performance of real-time evacuation traffic management.