
Pamela Murray-TuiteClemson University | CU · Department of Civil Engineering
Pamela Murray-Tuite
PhD
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138
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Introduction
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August 2017 - present
August 2005 - August 2017
Publications
Publications (138)
The design of highway curves has significant impact on traffic safety. More than 25% of fatal crashes in the US occur on horizontal curves, and the crash rate for curves is three times higher than other highway sections.
A key contributor to highway curve related crashes is excessive vehicle speed. Safe highway speed on a curve is influenced by th...
Evacuation after hurricane impacts appear (post-impact evacuation) has been underemphasized in empirical
evacuation studies. This study uses well-examined factors for pre-impact evacuation and novel factors for post-impact evacuation in a sequential logit model for pre- and post-impact evacuation choices. Results show that the
evacuation warning is...
The community and ecological benefits of trees and forests along roadways and other transportation infrastructure are important. Historically, the dialogue surrounding trees in transportation systems has focused on safety and crash reduction. We propose the sub-field of “Transportation Forestry” to maximize the benefits and minimize the risks of tr...
People with intellectual disability are vulnerable to building fires. Yet, they continue to be one of the most underrepresented groups in evacuation research. To bridge this gap, this study presents one of the very few analyses of building evacuation for people with intellectual disability. The purpose of this study is to collect data and determine...
The powers that artificial intelligence (AI) has developed are impressive, with recent success in leveraging human expertise at various stages of model development. AI can attain its full potential only if, as part of its intelligence, it also actively teams with humans to co-create solutions. Combining AI simulation with human intelligence through...
Supporting humans and artificial intelligence (AI) machines as teammates in flood evacuation decisions relies on a carefully designed system with the capability for monitoring, analyzing, responding, and executing. In this context, research is needed to improve the integration of human knowledge into the AI machines. The goal is to achieve trusting...
As climate change influences flood frequency, transportation damage and disruptions will become more common. Given the network’s expanse and cost of construction, communities’ mitigation efforts should be informed by analyses that span normal conditions and disaster management phases. This paper analyzes road segment criticality in normal, flood re...
This study aims to provide a more robust understanding of the elements involved in emergency managers' decision-making processes when issuing hurricane evacuation orders. We used the principles of the theory of bounded rationality to formulate research questions for understanding decision-making during uncertain times (i.e., hurricane evacuation or...
During evacuations, households make a number of important, related choices including accommodation type, destination, and departure time. They may make trade-offs among these choices where one decision affects the others. The analysis models the linkages among these three aforementioned choices using data from a household behavioral intention surve...
title>ABSTRACT
Autonomous ground vehicles have the potential to reduce the risk to Soldiers in unfamiliar, unstructured environments. Unmanned operations in unstructured environments require the ability to guide the vehicles from their starting position to a target position. This paper proposes a framework to plan paths across such unstructured en...
Fuel demand surges and supply shortages during hurricanes are problematic. However, fuel consumption and refueling behavior are not well discussed in disaster scenarios compared with the extant literature on these topics during normal conditions. This study used an emerging data source to report when fuel demand (indicated by gas station visits) de...
Phased evacuation is an under-studied strategy, and relatively little is known about compliance with the phased process. This study modelled households’ responses to a phased evacuation order based on a household behavioral intention survey. About 66% of the evacuees reported that they would comply with a phased evacuation order. A latent class log...
Since 1995, several countries and states have implemented roadway traffic safety projects with the goal of achieving a highway system with no fatal or serious injury crashes. South Carolina’s Target Zero plan is multifaceted in that it identifies several preventative measures to reduce fatalities. A common thread of these programs is that they are...
Emergency management agencies and departments of transportation benefit from transportation simulation support when developing their emergency response or evacuation plans. No-notice events are increasingly becoming part of these plans. Few, if any, studies have shown how to operationalize general no-notice evacuation considerations. To fill this g...
The impacts of COVID-19 on for-hire vehicle (FHV) (e.g., Uber/Lyft, often referred to as transportation network companies in other locations) and taxi use have been relatively understudied compared with transit and personal vehicles. This study analyzed and estimated the changes in ridership for taxis and FHVs in New York City during the COVID-19 p...
Evacuation traffic management has been implemented in large-scale disaster evacuations (such as hurricanes) to facilitate traffic flow and reduce travel delay. The outcomes of these strategies were quantified via traffic simulation but were assumed to have no/limited impacts on households' evacuation-related decisions. This study analyzed and model...
Wildfires are becoming more frequent and increasing in intensity, which results in significant threats to human life and property. Road networks play an important role in emergency activities. It is reasonable that robust road connectivity will give evacuees and emergency services the ability to respond more effectively, which may lead to a reducti...
In hurricane evacuation studies, the extant literature has extensively explored the effect of risk perception on evacuate/stay decisions. However, less attention has been paid to how perceived certainty affects households' evacuate/stay decisions. The objectives of this paper are to explore the effects of (1) perceived certainty about location of i...
Conventional evacuation studies typically do not gauge the development of participants’ certainty about evacuation-related decisions with the updates in the information provided to them. This study uses an online survey that provides three kinds of progressively varied information about the current status of a hypothetical hurricane for five days l...
This paper investigates how perceived certainty factors influenced households’ selection of destination and accommodation type during evacuation. Using survey responses from Jacksonville, FL, multinomial logit models were developed for both choices. For the first, greater understanding of hurricane-related graphics decreased households' probability...
A number of recent disasters have challenged the functionality of transport networks. The significance of road transport infrastructure to the functioning means that systems need to be able to operate under undesirable conditions, and quickly return to acceptable levels of service. The objective of the study is to analyze real-world networks speed...
Hurricanes cause substantial inundation of transportation networks, rendering them inaccessible to emergency response vehicles. Because storm tides and heavy rainfall often co-occur during hurricanes, a reliable assessment of roadway inundation in coastal areas requires adequate representation of both flood sources. This study serially coupled a hy...
This paper takes a deep dive into analyzing crash-related site characteristics and determining which characteristics have increased odds of involvement in fatal crashes. This research identifies detailed characteristics of fatal crash sites for South Carolina from the year 2019. Over 900 fatal crashes were used in the characterization, and details...
Based on research on recent disasters from around the world, this chapter identifies lessons and strategies for strengthening the resilience of transportation systems. It argues that transportation is essential to the resilience of other systems, which support disaster response and recovery. There are three reasons to focus on international perspec...
Mass evacuations, particularly those at a statewide level, are among the largest single-event highway traffic events. They can last several days, cover thousands of miles of roadway, and include hundreds of thousands of people and vehicles. Often, evacuations are criticized for their inefficiency and poor management. Despite the critical importance...
The potential use of privately-owned autonomous vehicles (AVs) for the evacuation of carless households threatened by hurricanes is underexplored. Based on 518 original survey responses from South Carolina (SC) residents, an ordered logistic model was developed to determine the willingness of individuals to temporarily share their AVs for evacuatio...
While non-essential travel was canceled during the coronavirus infectious disease (COVID-19) pandemic, grocery shopping was essential. The objectives of this study were to: 1) examine how grocery store visits changed during the early outbreak of COVID-19, and 2) estimate a model to predict the change of grocery store visits in the future, within th...
Effective evacuation management plans can help reduce the negative impacts of disasters. Understanding evacuee travel behavior is critical for the design of evacuation plans. In this paper, we explore which factors contribute to evacuees selecting freeway vs. non-freeway evacuation routes. Freeways are of particular interest due to their ability to...
This paper introduces a semi-automated system that facilitates emergency response vehicle (ERV) movement through a transportation link by providing instructions to downstream non-ERVs. The proposed system adapts to information from non-ERVs that are nearby and downstream of the ERV. As the ERV passes stopped non-ERVs, new non-ERVs are considered. T...
Using survey data from 3004 respondents aged 21 and older in Northern Virginia, Richmond, and the Tidewater area, this paper identifies factors associated with respondents’ travel choices in alcohol-related situations: (1) the last time the respondent consumed alcohol, (2) when avoiding driving after drinking, and (3) when avoiding riding with a dr...
Understanding how information use contributes to uncertainties surrounding evacuation decisions is crucial during disasters. While literature increasingly establishes that people consult multiple information sources in disaster situations, little is known about the patterns in which multiple media and personal network sources are combined simultane...
Shadow evacuation and non-compliance are among undesirable behaviors during hurricane events. Based on a post-Hurricane Matthew household survey, this study aims to understand the combined effects of information source and uncertainty on individual-level evacuate–stay decisions from the Jacksonville, Florida metropolitan area. A random parameter lo...
Strategies for controlling pandemics include social distancing. Using data from a 2016 nation-wide survey pertaining to influenza, (generalized) ordered logit models are developed to identify the factors associated with the relative frequency (never/sometimes/always) a household (a) isolates a sick child from others in the household, (b) keeps the...
Hurricane Irma caused widespread evacuation activity across Florida and some of its neighboring states in September of 2017. The researchers gathered estimated travel times from the Google Distance Matrix API over about a month to identify and analyze evacuation periods on roads in Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina during this time. Travel time...
The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in significant social and economic impacts throughout the world. In addition to the health consequences, the impacts on travel behavior have also been sudden and wide ranging. This study describes the drastic changes in human behavior using the analysis of highway volume data as a representation of personal activity a...
This research study focused on the evaluation of an emulated in-vehicle Active Traffic and Demand Management (ATDM) system on Interstate 66 in Northern Virginia. Traditional ATDM systems rely on infrastructure-mounted variable message signs (VMS) to provide information (speed limits, lane availability, etc.) to the traveling public. By providing in...
Influenza is a contagious virus affecting both one's health and economic productivity. This study evaluates uses a survey of 2168 individuals across the U.S. Ordered logit regressions are used to model risk perception and generalized ordered logit regressions are used to model risk mitigation travel-related decisions. Models are estimated for three...
This paper adds partial household evacuation to the traditional binary evacuate/stay decision. Based on data from a survey of Jacksonville, FL residents after Hurricane Matthew, multinomial (MNL) and random parameter MNL models were developed to determine the influential factors and whether some variables’ effects are more nuanced than prior litera...
State Departments of Transportation (DOTs) in the United States are responsible for a large portfolio of transportation modes and services, including passenger and freight systems. These responsibilities include operations under routine conditions and during incidents and events that result from various natural and human-caused hazards. During unex...
Hurricanes are one of the most dangerous catastrophes faced by the USA. The associated life losses can be reduced by proper planning and estimation of evacuation demand by emergency planners. Traditional evacuation demand estimation involves a sequential process of estimating various decisions such as whether to evacuate or stay, evacuation destina...
Hurricane Sandy greatly disrupted the New York City (NYC) region’s transportation systems, electric power systems, work locations, and schools in 2012. This study uses survey responses from NYC Metropolitan Area residents to develop an agent-based model that depicts commuter travel behavior and adaptation after the disruption. Six scenarios were te...
Evacuations, a critical and widely used emergency response action, vary widely in terms of their scale, scope, urgency and level of organization. While they differ from event to event, history shows that there are a small set of variables, inherent to all evacuations, that largely govern their effectiveness. In this paper, these fundamental variabl...
In hazard and disaster contexts, human‐centered approaches are promising for interdisciplinary research since humans and communities feature prominently in many definitions of disaster and the built environment is designed and constructed by humans to serve their needs. With a human‐centered approach, the decision‐making agent becomes a critical co...
Conceptualizing, assessing, and managing disaster risks involve collecting and synthesizing pluralistic information—from natural, built, and human systems—to characterize disaster impacts and guide policy on effective resilience investments. Disaster research and practice, therefore, are highly complex and inherently interdisciplinary endeavors. Ch...
Background:
Self-protective behaviors of social distancing and vaccination uptake vary by demographics and affect the transmission dynamics of influenza in the United States. By incorporating the socio-behavioral differences in social distancing and vaccination uptake into mathematical models of influenza transmission dynamics, we can improve our...
Building an interdisciplinary team is critical to disaster response research as it often deals with acute onset events, short decision horizons, constrained resources, and uncertainties related to rapidly unfolding response environments. This article examines three teaming mechanisms for interdisciplinary disaster response research, including ad ho...
Emergency response vehicles' (ERVs) travel is risky, as non-ERV drivers are often unsure of the ERV's next maneuver and how to facilitate its movement. An integer linear program (ILP), introduced in this paper, facilitates the ERV's movement through a transportation link. Leveraging vehicle-to-vehicle communications, information is collected about...
With the increasing number of hurricanes in the last decade, efficient and timely evacuation remains a significant concern. Households’ decisions to evacuate/stay and selection of departure time are complex phenomena. This study identifies the different factors that influence the decision making process, and if a household decides to evacuate, what...
This paper used survey data from 397 commuters in the New York City area to determine the transportation-related disruptions and socio-demographic characteristics associated with the duration of home to work commute travel changes after Hurricane Sandy in 2012. The durations examined included those associated with working schedule/location alterati...
Household behavior and dynamic traffic flows are the two most important aspects of hurricane evacuations. However, current evacuation models largely overlook the complexity of household behavior leading to oversimplified traffic assignments and, as a result, inaccurate evacuation clearance times in the network. In this paper, we present a high fide...
Bridge designs are commonly based on a criterion to withstand the n-year flood event. For example, a highway bridge might be designed to pass the 100-year flood. Failure may occur if the structure faces an event larger than this. Climate change may necessitate different design criteria because of changes to flood frequency behavior. This study exam...
Using survey data from nearly 400 commuters, this paper identifies factors associated with commuter changes after Hurricane Sandy. Adaptations included changing transportation modes, routes, and/or departure times (earlier or later), and canceling trips. Changes were not mutually exclusive and each was considered separately in multivariable binary...
This chapter identifies many unique features of large planned events and provides example strategies of and how efforts for occasions like these can be leveraged to improve planning for emergencies and other unexpected events. Although planned, unplanned, and emergency events cause conditions that differ from routine travel situations, they have so...
Intersections form one of the biggest challenges to emergency managers when evacuation plans are developed in urban areas. Signalized intersections reduce the directional capacity of a roadway because they must allocate the right-of-way between competing movements and approaches. In response to this problem, a variety of unconventional intersection...
Shadow evacuation, defined as people evacuating from outside the official evacuation zone, can be extensive, can cause congestion, and can make it difficult for evacuees in high-risk areas to reach safety. For modeling and simulation, approaches typically involve selecting a distance from evacuation zones and a percentage of households evacuating w...
This study investigates the implementation of crossing elimination configurations at intersections, by neighborhood characteristics; a "neighborhood" is defined by its surrounding intersections and by supply and demand situations to identify evacuation travel time impacts and situations and crossing elimination configurations that should be conside...
Evacuation is a typical recourse to prevent loss of life if a high storm surge occurs, especially in hurricane-prone regions. Bridges are the key locations of bottlenecks. Because of the specific geographic shape and roadway network of Miami Beach, Florida, residents need to evacuate over one of the six major bridges or causeways: MacArthur Causewa...
This paper investigated the impact that the 2013 United States federal government shutdown had on the transportation system in Northern Virginia. Transit ridership data before and during the shutdown were provided by three transit agencies operating in Washington, DC, and its Northern Virginia suburbs. A month of pre-shutdown road volumes and trave...
The objectives of this paper are to identify the contributing factors to households' choice of the number of vehicles used for evacuation and to develop predictive models of this choice that explicitly consider the constraint imposed by the number of vehicles owned by the household. This constraint is not accommodated by regular ordered response lo...
Crossing elimination is a relatively recent strategy that emergency managers and departments of transportation may consider during no-notice evacuations. In this strategy, certain intersection movements that may be permissible under normal operating conditions are prohibited so that arterial traffic flow will increase. A few previous studies examin...
In 2009, two trains of Washington, DC's Metrorail system collided, resulting in nine deaths and 50 serious injuries. Based on a multiwave survey of Metrorail users in the months after the crash, this article reports how the accident appears to have (1) changed over time the tradeoffs among safety, speed, frequency of service, cost, and reliability...