As demonstrated by the Camp Fire evacuation, communications (city-to-city, city-to-residents) play important roles in coordinating traffic operations and safeguarding region-wide evacuation processes in wildfire events. This collaborative report across multiple domains (fire, communication and traffic), documents a series of simulations and findings of the wildfire evacuation process for resource-strapped towns in Northern California. It consists of: (1) meteorological and vegetation-status dependent fire spread simulation (cellular automata model); (2) agency-level and agency-to-residents communication simulation (system dynamics model); and (3) dynamic traffic assignment (spatial-queue model). Two case studies are conducted: one for the town of Paradise (and the surrounding areas) and another for the community of Bolinas. The data and models are based on site visits and interviews with local agencies and residents. The integrated simulation framework is used to assess the interdependencies among the natural environment, the evacuation traffic and the communication networks from an interdisciplinary point of view, to determine the performance requirements to ensure viable evacuation strategies under urgent, dynamic wildfire conditions. The case study simulations identify both potential traffic and communication bottlenecks. This research supports integrating fire, communication and traffic simulation into evacuation performance assessments.

Wildfires have become a perpetual crisis for communities across California. For life-threatening wildfires, mass evacuation often becomes the only viable option to protect lives. Yet, looking back at recent events, including the devastating 2018 Camp Fire in Northern California, there are significant challenges associated with the evacuation process, such as multi-agency coordination, agency-resident communication, and management of extraordinarily high amounts of traffic within a short period of time. Currently, emergency planners use evacuation models that are typically based on existing traffic simulation models; however, it is increasingly clear that other factors need to be considered, such as fire progression and communication systems. To address this gap, UC Berkeley researchers constructed a framework and set of models that include the combined impacts of three dynamic processes on evacuations – fire progression, communication systems, and traffic flow. The framework and models were applied to two case studies in California: the town of Paradise and the unincorporated community of Bolinas. In the Paradise case, the scenarios were based on the 2018 Camp Fire event. For the Bolinas case, the scenarios were based on hypothetical wildfire events.