An Efficient Staged Evacuation Planning Algorithm Applied to Multi-Exit Buildings

Abstract

When the occupant density of buildings is large enough, evacuees are prone to congestion during emergency evacuation, which leads to the extension of the overall escape time. Especially for multi-exit buildings, it’s a challenging problem to afford an effective evacuation plan. In this paper, a novel evacuation planning algorithm applied to multi-exit buildings is proposed, which is based on an indoor route network model. Firstly, evacuees are grouped by their location proximity, then all groups are approximately equally classified into several evacuation zones, each of which has only one safe exit. After that, all evacuation groups in the same zone are sorted by their shortest path length, then the time window of each evacuation group occupying the safe exit is calculated in turn. In the case of congestion at the safe exit, the departure time of each evacuation group is delayed in its arrival order. The objectives of the proposed algorithm include minimizing the total evacuation time of all evacuees, the travel time of each evacuee, avoiding traffic congestion, balancing traffic loads among different exits, and achieving high computational efficiency. Case studies are conducted to examine the performance of our algorithm. The influences of group number, group size, evacuation speed on the total evacuation time are discussed on a single-exit network, and that of partitioning methods and evacuation density on the performance and applicability in different congestion levels are also discussed on a multi-exit network. Results demonstrate that our algorithm has a higher efficiency and performs better for evacuations with a large occupant density.

Hierarchical Behavior Model for Multi-Agent System with Evasion Capabilities and Dynamic Memory

“…In research based on a time-extended network model for evacuation with optimization [15], the planned evacuation model achieved up to 31% faster evacuations. The partitioned and staged evacuation planning (PSEP) algorithm for multi-exit evacuation [16], which requires evacuation planning to be divided and processed in smaller groups to reduce the complexity of the problem, had similar efficiency with reduced computational cost compared to the model in [15].…”

“…Eivazy and Malek [8] offered an agent-based solution for flood management. Several simulations with multiple agents were performed for emergency evacuations [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16].…”

Time-Aware and Temperature-Aware Fire Evacuation Path Algorithm in IoT-Enabled Multi-Story Multi-Exit Buildings

“…In [ 16 ], the bee colony optimization approach is proposed to find the evacuation path via the idea of swarm intelligence from the bee colony. In [ 17 ], the first multi-exit evacuation algorithm is proposed to evacuate crowded people in large buildings. The basic idea in [ 17 ] is to partition the evacuees into groups and evacuate each group to its nearest exit.…”

“…In [ 17 ], the first multi-exit evacuation algorithm is proposed to evacuate crowded people in large buildings. The basic idea in [ 17 ] is to partition the evacuees into groups and evacuate each group to its nearest exit. To avoid congestion problems at the exits, the departure time of each group is calculated and delayed in its evacuation sequence.…”

A Look at Algorithm BEPtoPNST

“…Specifically, in relation to the time and space used by the algorithms to solve the problem according to the size or length of the input [15]. Moreover, when these technologies, at most, generate a single solution to the problem of evacuation routes [16][17][18]. For this reason, this work analyzes the complexity, in terms of execution time, of algorithm BEPtoPNS T [19][20][21][22][23][24] with the aim to advance in the development of computational strategies that allow efficient planning of evacuation routes.…”