Book Description

Every year, natural hazards such as hurricanes devastate entire regions, cause widespread major infrastructure damages (e.g., roadway/bridge closures, power outages, et cetera), and claim lives in the U.S. The State of Florida, which is surrounded by subtropical waters from three sides due to its unique geography, is one of the southern states significantly vulnerable to hurricanes. In recent years, hurricanes Hermine (2016), Irma (2017), and Michael (2018) have caused substantial damages to the infrastructure such as roadway and bridge closures and power outages in Florida. Many Floridians had to evacuate to safer locations under mandatory or voluntary evacuation orders before these hurricanes hit. Massive delays and major congestion on the evacuation routes made the problem even more challenging for the residents of affected regions as they needed to evacuate in a timely manner. In 2017, Hurricane Irma, a Category 4 hurricane, took on the entirety of Florida, causing the state's largest evacuation ever as 7 million residents fled the hurricane. Floridians fleeing the hurricane faced a unique challenge on where to go since Irma made an unusual landfall from the south, enveloping the entire state forcing evacuees to drive farther north, and creating traffic jams along Florida evacuation routes worse than any other hurricane in history. Therefore, there is no doubt that there is a need to extensively assess the spatiotemporal traffic impacts of hurricanes such as Irma on Florida's major highways based on the real-time traffic data before, during, and after the hurricane made landfall. Furthermore, due to hurricanes, many Floridian communities and specifically those along coastal areas are required to evacuate to safer places such as emergency shelters. Therefore, shelters in Florida play a pivotal role in meeting the needs of their communities and providing services to the public. Ensuring spatial accessibility to these facilities is essential. Providing accessibility has been even more challenging since these communities were hit by the COVID-19 pandemic during the hurricane season, thereby restricting shelter capacity due to social distancing requirements. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also indicate that it is potentially hazardous to use congregate shelters. This capacity challenge can be addressed by the use of alternative non-congregate shelters (id est, lodging establishments such as hotels and motels). These are recommended by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in order to protect public health and limit general population sheltering. In addition to hurricane shelters, rapid population growth, urbanization, and economic development have been creating other challenges in providing transportation-based accessibility to other critical facilities over the last decade. This is especially critical when we consider ensuring the transportation-based accessibility to essential facilities such as healthcare providers since these facilities provide important services to people. During a disaster such as the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, this issue becomes more confounding since these facilities play crucial roles in helping their communities to better prepare and recover from this uncontrolled outbreak. For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, a drastic increase in the number of coronavirus patients caused a shortage of healthcare resources such as Intensive Care Unit (ICU) beds and ventilators in the U.S. The high demands for these services led to a reduction in the efficiency of the entire healthcare system. This dissertation proposes several novel methodological approaches to help solve aforementioned problems with the following objectives: " to assess the spatial accessibility of different age groups to mental health facilities that offer mental and behavioral services to the people in the State of Florida." to assess accessibility of COVID-19 patients to healthcare providers in Florida." to assess the spatial accessibility of Northwest Florida communities to congregate and non-congregate shelters during a disaster such as the COVID-19 pandemic." to spatiotemporally analyze Hurricane Irma's traffic impacts on Florida's major highways (I-95, I-75, I-10, I-4, and turnpike) based on real-time traffic data before, during, and after the hurricane made landfall." to develop a methodology to integrate evacuation and storm surge modeling with a case study analysis of Hurricane Irma hitting Southeast Florida. Findings clearly showed that imperfect forecasts and the uncertainty surrounding Irma's predicted path resulted in high levels of congestion and severe delays on Florida's major evacuation routes. Moreover, the results revealed that many areas in the northwest and southern Florida have lower access to critical facilities such as shelters or healthcare facilities compared to other locations. The residents in central Florida (e.g., Tampa and Orlando cities) had the highest level of accessibility given their higher access ratios. In addition, the results indicated that people in coastal areas where a higher number of lodging facilities are located have better access. Considering the capacity of each facility shows that many areas in Northwest Florida have lower access to lodging establishments than emergency relief shelters