Transportation accessibility assessment of critical emergency facilities: Aging population-focused case studies in Florida

Abstract

Over the last two decades, the task of providing transportation accessibility for aging people has been a growing concern as that population is rapidly expanding. From this standpoint, serious challenges arise when we consider ensuring aging people’s transportation-based accessibility to critical emergency facilities such as hurricane shelters. An efficient strategy to address this problem involves using Geographical Information Systems (GIS)-based tools in order to evaluate the available transportation network in conjunction with the spatial distribution of aging people, and critical emergency facilities, plus regional traffic characteristics. This study develops a Geographical Information Systems (GIS)- based methodology to measure and assess the transportation accessibility of these critical facilities through a diverse set of case study applications in the State of Florida. Within this evaluation, spatially detailed county-based accessibility scores are calculated with respect to designated hurricane shelters (both regular and special needs shelters) using both static and dynamic travel times between population block groups and critical facilities. Because aging of the Baby Boom generation (people born between 1946 and 1964) is expected to produce a 79% increase in the number of people over the age of 65 in the next two decades, the proposed methodology and case studies can inform transportation agencies’ efforts to develop efficient aging-focused transportation and accessibility plans.