Development of Evacuation Route Planning Algorithm for Responding to Urban Forest Fires

The Gangwon region (Korea) is severely affected by forest fires, where approximately sixty-six wildfires have occurred over the last three years, which in turn have damaged 1299 ha of this region. Hence, it is necessary to develop schemes for reducing the damage caused by forest fires in Gangwon. In this study, we developed an algorithm for planning evacuation routes. The developed algorithm was applied to a virtual scenario for determining evacuation start points within the spread range of wildfires, fifteen evacuation routes were then determined for each start point, and the associated distance information was displayed. Furthermore, by employing the Naver Maps software, the obtained evacuation routes was compared and analyzed with respect to the route distance. We believe that the results obtained from this study can be used as basic data for making decisions to identify various evacuation routes.

Network Modeling of Hurricane Evacuation Using Data-Driven Demand and Incident-Induced Capacity Loss Models

The development of a hurricane evacuation simulation model is a crucial task in emergency management and planning. Two major issues affect the reliability of an evacuation model: one is estimations of evacuation traffic based on socioeconomic characteristics, and the other is capacity change and its influence on evacuation outcome due to traffic incidents in the context of hurricanes. Both issues can impact the effectiveness of emergency planning in terms of evacuation order issuance, and evacuation route planning. The proposed research aims to investigate the demand and supply modeling in the context of hurricane evacuations. This methodology created three scenarios for the New York City (NYC) metropolitan area, including one base and two evacuation scenarios with different levels of traffic demand and capacity uncertainty. Observed volume data prior to Hurricane Sandy is collected to model the response curve of the model, and the empirical incident data under actual evacuation conditions are analyzed and modeled. Then, the modeled incidents are incorporated into the planning model modified for evacuation. Simulation results are sampled and compared with observed sensor-based travel times as well as O-D-based trip times of NYC taxi data. The results show that the introduction of incident frequency and duration models can significantly improve the performance of the evacuation model. The results of this approach imply the importance of traffic incident consideration for hurricane evacuation simulation.

Model of emergence evacuation route planning with contra flow and zone scheduling in disaster evacuation

Evacuation is characterized by rapid movement of people in unsafe locations or disaster sites to safer locations. The traffic management strategy for commonly used evacuations is the use of Shoulder-Lane, contraflowing traffic and gradual evacuation. Contra-flow has been commonly used in traffic management by changing traffic lanes during peak hours. To implement the contra-flow operation, there are two main problems that must be decided, namely Optimal Contraflow Lane Configuration Problem (OCLCP) and Optimal Contraflow Scheduling. Within the OCSP there are two approaches that can be used: zone scheduling and flow scheduling. Problem of Contra Flow and Zone Scheduling Problem is basically an Emergence Evacuation Route Planning (EERP) issue. This research will discuss EERP with ContraFlow and Zone Scheduling which can guarantee the movement of people in disaster area to safe area in emergency situation.

Improvement of Evacuation Modeling by Considering Road Blockade in the Case of an Earthquake: A Case Study of Daitoku School District, Kanazawa City, Japan

In disaster management, evacuation modeling is considered a useful visual tool to disaster managers for reviewing current evacuation strategies, estimating the ability of shelters to accommodate all evacuees, and developing evacuation route planning. Though there are several existing studies on evacuation modeling in the case of an earthquake, research that integrates road blockades into evacuation simulations is quite limited. From that viewpoint, this research aims to develop evacuation modeling with consideration of road blockades to simulate how residents move to evacuation centers (hereafter, shelters) through urban areas following an earthquake occurrence. The research also determines difficulties that residents may encounter under earthquake conditions, compared with normal conditions, corresponding to considering or not considering road blockades, respectively, such as having no access to shelters, taking longer routes instead of shortest routes, and so on. Debris from damaged buildings in an urban area is assumed as the main source of debris that would cause a road blockade. The model is applied to a case study of the Daitoku school district in Kanazawa city. According to simulated results, due to road blockades, occupants of many damaged buildings did not have access to shelters, and a lot of evacuees needed to move to shelters with longer routes instead of taking the shortest routes. Furthermore, the research results show the possibility of considering road blockades for improving current evacuation modeling and making evacuation simulations more realistic.

Dynamic Evacuation Planning on Cruise Ships Based on an Improved Ant Colony System (IACS)

The emergency evacuation route planning of cruise ships directly affects the safety of all crew members and passengers during emergencies. Research on the planning of emergency evacuation routes for cruise ships is a frontier subject of maritime safety. This study proposes an improved ant colony system (IACS) to solve the evacuation route planning of crowds on cruise ships. The IACS, which is different from common single-path ant colony system (ACS) evacuation algorithms, is used to solve the multipath planning problem of crowd evacuation from cruise ships by considering crowd density and speed in the model. An increasing flow method is introduced into the IACS to improve the efficiency of the proposed algorithm. Numerical experiments show that this method meets the requirements of evacuation analysis guidelines for new and existing passenger ships (MSC.1/Circ.1533)and can effectively and efficiently plan the emergency evacuation path for cruise ship crowd.

A Virtual Reality Simulation Method for Crowd Evacuation in a Multiexit Indoor Fire Environment

Evacuation simulations in virtual indoor fire scenes hold great significance for public safety. However, existing evacuation simulation methods are inefficient and provide poor visualized when applied to virtual reality (VR) simulations. Additionally, the influences of the interaction of evacuation processes on the choice of multiple exits have not been fully considered. In the paper, we propose a VR simulation method for crowd evacuation in a multiexit indoor fire environment. An indoor 3D scene model and character model, for studying the environmental factors that affect the multiexit selection of personnel during the fire process, are combined with environmental factors to enhance the evacuation route planning algorithm to improve the efficiency of the VR simulation of evacuation in the scene. In addition, a prototype system that supports multiple experience modes is proposed, and case experiment analyses are performed. The results show that the method described in this paper can effectively support the real-time simulation of indoor fire evacuations in virtual scenes, providing both reliable simulation results and good visualization effects.

Integrating Human Behavior and Safety Measure into Evacuation Route Planning in a Volcanic Crisis

Many traditional methods in evacuation route planning are motivated by the operational objective, such as total travel/clearance time. Little attention has been given to the human factor and the safety aspect of the evacuees during the planning phase. Our study aims to propose a simple yet practical route planning method that simultaneously considers human behavior, safety factor, and the travel time in a volcanic crisis context. The planning model is developed based on the shortest-path problem with a joint-cost parameter representing the three aspects. We present a large-scale street network in Merapi volcano as a case study. The result implies that employing a joint-cost parameter is effective for creating an evacuation route that is reasonably safe and in line with human cognition in navigation. The finding offers practical insights for the stakeholders as part of the greater effort to develop a systematic disaster management plan.