Over the past decade, Florida has faced a number of major hurricanes that brought storm surges and widespread devastation to communities across the state. Kimley-Horn, in collaboration with the University of Wisconsin-Platteville Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University-Florida State University Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, conducted a comparative assessment of storm surge impacts on evacuation accessibility of southwest Florida communities, specifically Lee and Collier counties. Replica is proud to support research, and our origin-destination data was utilized as an element in the study.
This study aims to fill the gap of research focused on evacuation accessibility of vulnerable populations across hurricanes, as well as the lack of comparative analyses focusing on how storms expose infrastructure vulnerabilities. In the highlighted study, Replica’s origin-destination data – specifically an OD matrix with half-mile sampling setups for Lee and Collier counties – was utilized to assess departure times, destination endpoints, and route connectivity. This data was utilized in a calculation that produced an accessibility index for hurricanes Irma and Ian. Read more about the study’s methodology, results, and conclusions at the link here.
Environmental assessment and accessibility studies have been, and will continue to be, critical as environmental disasters like hurricanes and fires continue to occur. Replica can support such analyses and more with modeled data and tooling like:
- Road Closure Scenarios Application: Simulate the effects of closing a road for emergency planning – for example, if a road becomes inaccessible due to a fire or storm surges.
- OD Flow Explorer: Visualize bidirectional trip volume flows between geographies to understand travel patterns.
- Places Demographic Data: Use detailed population data to understand where people live and travel that might not have access to a private automobile during a weather emergency.
- Speeds Data: Understand existing conditions for evacuation planning with link level, quarter-hourly speed profiles and average free-flow speeds.
If you would like to use Replica data for evacuation planning, natural disaster response, or emergency preparation planning similar to the way Kimley-Horn did for this particular study, reach out to us at support@replicahq.com and we’ll let you know your options!
