Publications

Hurricane Evacuation Study (HES) Process Requirements

Burks, Lynne S.; Hernandez, Patricia M.; Miller, Trisha H.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) National Hurricane Program (NHP), helps protect communities and residents from hurricane hazards by providing evacuation preparedness technical assistance to State, local, and tribal governments. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) and FEMA are co- sponsoring an effort to modernize technology components of the NHP, including the Hurricane Evacuation Study (HES), which addresses planning and impact assessments for coastal regions. The current HES process is manual, financially costly, and can take up to several years to complete. To streamline this process, the NHP Technology Modernization Program is developing an automated HES Tool that will reduce the cost and time requirements of the HES process by up to 70%. This document outlines the requirements of the current HES process and explains how the HES Tool can be used to fulfill those requirements. It also contains a detailed list of the modeling and simulation capabilities available within the HES tool.