Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

The porject I am researhing is how to guide citizens to safety when meeting the hurricanes.
That includes how to guide cars, where to build temperal houses...
But I don't know what method can I use.

johnbian8308,

Welcome to the Ask an Expert forums!. Here are some thoughts about how you can proceed with your project.

(1) If this is a research paper or similar project, where you are required to research what has already been done with regards to your question and then write a report on it, I would suggest taking a trip to your local library and doing research on what existing methods are used to evacuate/protect people from hurricanes. Your librarian will be able to help you find books on the subject and guide you to useful internet resources. You might also try a search on your favorite search engine. Try something like "hurricane evacuation" - you'll get lots of hits including tips from the Red Cross and various governmental agencies. Remember to evaluate the credibility of your sources. I would suggest that as you look through the information you find, you try to determine which methods work well and which do not.

(2) If this is for a science project where you are to do an experiment or complete an engineering project, I would suggest you first do all of the things in (1). Once you have done a substantial amount of research, you might decide that you want to test the feasibility and effectiveness of some different methods, playing around with different parameters to see if you can optimize particular method(s). Since you posted in the Math and Computer Science forum, I'm assuming that if your project involves doing an experiment, you would be using mathematical and computer simulations to test the various methods and attempt to optimize them. For example, you could look at a city with X number of people, Y number of cars, and a specified road system and model the traffic patterns that would occur if (a) everyone began to evacuate at once (b) evacuation was staggered to that a given number of people began leaving every half hour or (c) the people nearest the highways left first and then evacuation proceeded with the people next closest to the highway, etc. These are just some ideas about how you could make this an experiment.

Let us know what type of project you are doing (a research report or an experiment) and we'll do our best to help you!

Good luck with your project!

Hi,

It sounds like you have some time to develop a good project. Congratulations on having the good sense to get started early on what could be a really great project.

I would start by searching google.com for “how to avoid hurricanes”. That search returns lots of answers over many pages that seem relevant to your question. I suspect you will find your answer if you read widely about the topic and think about it.

Clearly many people would like to know the answer to your question - we as a nation have not been very successful so far, even when the weather forecasters have told us days in advance where a storm would be likely to hit, and the possible damage that could occur.

I think you may want to investigate hurricane weather forcasting, building standards/codes to withstand big storms, how to coordinate mass evacuations of areas in advance of the storms, and what the problems are when trying to bring aid to a devastated area(like the order of priorities- reestablish communications to assess damage, reopen roads, repair utilities, get food & water to victims, etc.) This is a huge project to do it all,and you may want to pick a part of the project to focus your inquiry on. What interests you most? Is it helping people move out of the path of an impending storm? Is it how to build houses strong enough that they won’t be damaged in a hurricane? Is it how to know if you could be in danger of being flooded/drowned by a storm surge? Is it how to predict the path of a hurricane?

If you check the ScienceBuddies Project Ideas write-ups you will find some very interesting ideas on hurricane path prediction, and some resources to help explore them.

https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... ?from=Home

https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... ?from=Home

https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... ?from=Home

https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... ?from=Home

This is a totally cool project idea, and I wish you terrific success with it.

Best regards,

Barrett Tomlinson

Thanks
I am doing a research paper, which aims at both predicting the path of hurricanes and guide people to evade.
Actually, the difficulty is the latter part, how to guide people to evade. As I haven't learnt much approaches to deal with this problem.
Is there any typical approaches to solve similiar problems?
Thanks again

I'm a bit confused with what you mean when you say "guide to evade". Are you wondering about how to evacuate people from areas that are in the path of the storm? If you can clarify what you mean by the phrase "guide to evade", we'll be able to help you track down some good information; however, since I'm not sure what you mean by the phrase, it's hard for me to help until I know what you mean.

Looking forward to your response.

Thanks for your reply.
My meaning is that if we stand at the viewpoint of government, how can we guide all the citizens to the safety.(DO I make myself clear?)
I am looking for math methods to deal with this.
Thanks again