Making a Complex Public Safety Project Simpler with Ladris

The Challenge

Nevada County is a rural county located in the foothills of California's Sierra Nevada. In response to AB747 and CA99 – California legislation that includes requirements for evacuation route planning – the County Office of Emergency Services needed a way to quantify evacuation mitigation priorities for every road, neighborhood, and community. Given that Nevada County has more than 2,800 miles of roadway, this was going to be a challenging task.

Collaboration with Ladris

To respond to the challenge at hand, Nevada County Office of Emergency Services leveraged their deployment of Ladris’ artificial intelligence software. First, the County identified neighborhoods and potential shelter locations. Based on this information, Ladris generated hundreds of potential evacuation scenarios, simulating conditions for over 150,000 road segments to determine which roadways posed the greatest risk. Neighborhoods were then ranked by egress time, clearly indicating which evacuation routes Nevada County should prioritize during mitigation efforts. 

Data in Action

With the help of Ladris, Nevada County Emergency Managers were able to expand their local knowledge of evacuation threats across the entire county in a fraction of the time, answering within days a question that would have taken months without Ladris. Nevada County turned a difficult, open-world problem into a clear, ranked chart of priorities, creating a quantifiable, data-driven foundation for future safety investments. The County transportation commission is already building on these findings, using the data to evaluate the potential impacts of increased state highway capacity.