An Integrated Emergency Evacuation System for Real-Time Operations -- A Case Study of Eagle Ford Shale Gas Area, South Texas

Due to the geographic position and a rich natural gas reservoir, the Eagle Ford Shale (EFS) is vulnerable to natural disasters like wildfire, tornado, flooding and chemical or gas leakage. The EFS area also lacks an effective disaster preparedness system to confront natural disasters. Timely disaster warning and evacuation guidelines can save the lives of people. In addition, a worker or a tourist may face difficulties in finding a safe area or shelter prior to the occurrence of natural and man-made disasters. For this reason, the authors have proposed a location-based early disaster warning and evacuation system using Integrated Mobile Sensor Environment (IMOSE). The system comprises a Disaster Management Server (DMS), android application, sensors and users. The sensors detect chemical or gas leaks and send data on the DMS. The disaster-affected area is determined by a ray casting algorithm. When the application detects that the user is in a disaster zone, it will disseminate an evacuation guideline on the map of the application, including the shortest path to a shelter or safe zone. In this paper, the authors describe the scenarios of the emergency evacuation by two case studies: gas leak and wildfire in the Eagle Ford area.