Dynamic risk simulation to assess natural hazards risk along roads

Abstract

Abstract. Risk generated by natural hazards on roads is usually calculated with equations integrating various parameters related to hazard and traffic. These are static variables, like an average number of vehicles crossing this section every day and an average vehicle speed. This methodology cannot take into account dynamic variations of traffic and interactions between vehicles such as speed modifications due to windy roads, slowdowns resulting from saturated traffic or vehicle tailbacks forming in front of traffic lights.Here we show, by means of a dynamic traffic simulator, that traffic variations may greatly influence the risk estimation over time. The risk is analysed on several sections of an Alpine road in Switzerland using a dynamic vehicles approach, and compared with the results of the static methodology. It demonstrates that risk can significantly increase on sinuous sections because of decreasing vehicle speed. For example, along an 800 m-long section of road containing two hairpin bends, the dynamic risk is about 50 % higher than the static one. Badly placed signalization, slowing down, or stopping the vehicles in a hazardous area may increase the risk by about 150 % (i.e. 2.5 times higher) along a straight road section where vehicles speed is high.A more realistic risk can thus be obtained from a dynamic approach, especially on mountain roads. The dynamic traffic simulator developed for this work appears to be a helpful tool to support decision-making in reducing risk on mountain roads and it shows the importance of keeping the traffic moving as freely as possible.

GPU-Accelerated Rendering Methods to Visually Analyze Large-Scale Disaster Simulation Data

“…Other authors such as Trapp et al (2015) and Vaaraniemi et al (2011) provide methods for GPU-accelerated road rendering, which is comparable to buffering. Alpha blending techniques are used by van der Zwaag et al (2015) to superimpose different outcomes of ensemble flood simulations. Kirsch and Döllner (2004) use rendering-based approaches to accelerate constructive solid geometry (CSG) operations.…”

Brief Communication: On direct impact probability of landslides on vehicles

“…1is generally used (e.g. Bunce et al, 1997;Ferlisi et al, 2012;Mignelli et al, 2012;Corominas and Mavrouli, 2013;Wang et al, 2014;Macciotta et al, 2015):…”

“…Few technical papers in the literature use this approach (e.g. Dorren et al, 2009;Voumard et al, 2013, as a comparison with the risk that they calculate using a traffic simulator), but it is commonly used in practice. Zischg et al (2005) use this formulation for snow avalanches impacting cars, which, in this case, is an acceptable simplification since W E is generally large for snow avalanches.…”

The impact of vehicle moving violations and freeway traffic flow on crash risk: An application of plugin development for microsimulation

“…This paper provides several contributions to the existing state of research. First, most studies simulating the impact of traffic risks have assumed ideal vehicle behavior [ 12 ] [ 13 ] [ 14 ]. This study presents a method for simulating various driver violating behaviours in existing microsimulation software through user-defined add-ons.…”