The Problem of Safe Evacuation of Large Floodplains Population During Flooding

Abstract

The floodplain environment of regulated large rivers make them attractive for urbanization. However, nearly flat terrain poses a threat of extensive flooding of such regions during severe floods. Therefore, the problem of effective organization of the population evacuation under the floods is topical for such floodplain areas. The spatial and temporal distribution of the flooding threat of large floodplains makes it possible to organize the population evacuation using a limited number of vehicles in the presence of a high-quality forecast of the hydrological regime. We study the problem of organizing the safe evacuation of all floodplain residents using fairly accurate forecasts of the flooding time points of settlements and evacuation routes based on high-performance hydrodynamic numerical experiments. Minimization of the number of evacuation vehicles on the set of safe schedules is carried out using empirical algorithms. The result is an empirical function of the dependence of the minimum number of vehicles that ensure the safe evacuation of the given territory population on the values of the hydrograph and the beginning moments of the evacuation. As an example, we built this function for the Northern part of the Volga-Akhtuba Floodplain.