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MacEachen Institute for Public Policy and Governance

Transportation Modelling for Evacuating the Halifax Peninsula

Modelling emergency evacuations

Transportation plays a crucial role during emergency evacuations by facilitating the swift and safe movement of people away from a potentially hazardous situation. By modelling transportation habits, we can better understand how evacuation may look in a real-life emergency and can improve the efficiency of evacuations.

Research on transportation modelling in mass evacuations is being led by MacEachen Institute Founding Fellow ÌýDr. Ahsan HabibÌýof DalTRAC (±«Óãtv Transportation Collaboratory) with the support of Post-Doctoral FellowÌýJahedul Alam.

Project details

Evacuating the Halifax Peninsula: Micro-simulation

Micro-simulation modelling of neighborhood prioritization for evacuating the Halifax Peninsula

Building on the base model, the project will seek to develop a framework for staged evacuation modelling. The model will examine which neighbourhood to evacuate first (e.g. north, south, east, west) and will consider vulnerabilities of the general population and what challenges they pose. The outcome of the model will offer insights on the extent to which clearance time for evacuation, average speed and queue length can be improved. 

Read the project paper on micro-simulation modelling of neighborhood prioritization for evacuating the Halifax Peninsula,  [PDF - 713 kB].

Briefing Note: [PDF - 315 kB]

Bus-based Evacuation Modelling Framework

The use of counter-measures (e.g. bus based evacuation) to improve mass evacuations. 

This project will use a holistic approach to adopt counter-measures to improve mass evacuation, including bus-based evacuation (public transit, school buses, etc). The outcome of this research will be to identify strategies that would be most useful to improve the efficiency of a mass evacuation.

Read about the use of counter-measures to improve mass evacuations in the paper  [PDF - 836 kB].

±«Óãtv DalTRAC

DalTRAC is a multi-disciplinary research facility dedicated to the advancement of transportation engineering/planning research and practice at ±«Óãtv University. The unit aims to contribute to transportation studies, planning, and analysis at local, regional and national levels.

DalTRAC Lab at Sexton Campus, Halifax.

±«Óãtv the Researchers


Dr. Ahsan Habib

Dr. Ahsan Habib is a transportation professor at ±«Óãtv University. He received a PhD degree in civil engineering from the University of Toronto. His research interests include transportation modelling, microsimulation of urban systems and smarter mobility planning. Dr. Habib is the founder of ±«Óãtv Transportation Collaboratory (DalTRAC), a CFI-sponsored lab under the Leaders Opportunity Grant program. His multidisciplinary research agenda has attracted funding from all tri-council granting agencies, including NSERC discovery grant, two SSHRC insights team grants and a CIHR grant.
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Jahedul Alam

Jahedul Alam isÌýa post-doctoral fellow at DalTRAC. His research focuses on emergency evacuation planning and modeling to understand and analyze intricacies around emergency evacuation and to make significant advances in managing unanticipated evacuation challenges.Ìý

During his PhD, he has been awarded multiple prestigious scholarships for genuine research contributions, including Izaak Walton Killam Pre-doctoral Scholarship, President Award, and Nova Scotia Graduate Scholarship.Ìý