Search

Many fire evacuation models have been proposed in recent years to better simulate such as an emergency situation. However most of them do not respect a recommendation of fire evacuation experts regarding the fact that evacuees should follow the boundaries of obstacles or wall to find the exits when their visibility is limited by smoke. This paper presents an agent-based evacuation model with Smoke Effect and Blind Evacuation Strategy (SEBES) which respects that recommendation by integrating a model of smoke diffusion and its effect on the evacuee’s visibility, speed, and evacuation strategy. The implementation of this model enables us to optimise the evacuation strategies taking into account the level of visibility. The obtained simulation results on a realistic model of the Metro supermarket of Hanoi confirm the important impact of smoke effect and blind evacuation strategy on the number of casualties.

To improve the evacuation efficiency of low-mobility populations, a transit staged evacuation strategy is proposed in this paper. The proposed strategy divides the evacuation process into two stages, the internal evacuation stage from the aggregation points to the transit hubs, and the external evacuation stage from the transit hubs to final shelters. Also, a transit network optimization model is established to locate the transit hubs and to search the transit routes with the target of a minimum total distance of transit-based evacuations. To solve the optimization model, A GA-based solution method is also presented. The numerical results from optimizing an evacuation network for a super typhoon justify the validity and usefulness of the transit staged evacuation strategy, and the transit network optimization model.

During the evacuation in subway system, the key factor to improve evacuation effectiveness and security is the correct estimating of the evacuation ability. In this paper, a evacuation simulation based method is put forward to compute and estimate the evacuation ability. This method has the advantages of quantitative estimation and easy calculating, so it's of great importance to determine the evacuation strategy.

When a major flooding event is expected the authorities in charge of the crisis management often consider bringing people to safety by making them leaving temporarily the threatened area before the onset of the flood. This strategy is called “horizontal evacuation”. It has to be distinguished from “vertical evacuation”, which means that people reach a shelter above the wtaer level within the flood area. Vertical evacuation is often the spontaneousbehaviourof people who are surprised by the flood and are trying to reach a tree, a floor upstairs, a roof of a building etc. in order to get away from the rising water. But vertical evacuation could also be consideredas an alternative strategy to horizontal evacuation when moving outside the flood area is neither a faisible nor a relevant option, for example in high-population density areas. In order to be a credible alternative to horizontal evacuation, vertical evacuation has to be carefully planned. This paper aims to explain why horizontal evacuation is not always a suitable option in case of major flood and to explore under what conditions vertical evacuation can be a relevantalternative solution to horizontal evacuation. It also adresses some general recommendations about how to prepare a vertical evacuation strategy..

With the development of modern cities, more and more ultra high-rise buildings have been built. Emergency evacuation of such buildings becomes one of the major concerns for building designers, building occupants and governments, especially after the disaster of 9/11. In this study we designed three experiments to investigate the process of ultra high-rise building evacuation. The experiments were performed in Shanghai World Financial Center, which is about 470 m tall. In the first experiment, the evacuation of a single pedestrian from the top floor to the first floor was performed. Movement characteristics such as mean speed and the time needed for evacuation were analyzed. In the second experiment, the mass evacuation process was captured by video cameras and the data were extracted out manually. The evacuees were distributed initially on floors 12–17, and were asked to evacuate through a staircase onto the refuge floor. On the refuge floor, i.e. the 6th floor, the evacuees were required to transit into another staircase to keep moving down to the ground floor. The characteristic space–time curves for each evacuee were extracted and analyzed. Parameters such as the mean speed and the evacuation time, as well as the characteristic of the transit process from one staircase to another were investigated. We at last mimicked and discussed the process of lift evacuation for an ultra high-rise building in the 3rd experiment. Evacuees located on the 41st and 65th floor were asked to move downward by stairs until they came to the refuge floors, where they would evacuate to the ground floor by lifts. The time characteristic of the mixed evacuation strategy was discussed. The basic data obtained from the experiments are useful for building designers and can be used to validate and refine ultra high-rise building evacuation models.

This paper introduces a double multiagent architecture allowing the triage of victims in emergency scenarios and the automatic update of their medical condition. Gathering updated information about the medical condition of victims is critical for designing an optimal evacuation strategy that minimizes the number of casualties in the aftermath of an emergency. The proposed scheme, currently under development, combines Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN), an Electronic Triage Tag and a double multiagent system (Agilla-JADE) to achieve a low cost, no infrastructure-based, efficient system. Initial results of the WSN roaming done by Agilla agents are presented.

This paper first proves the practicability of evacuation using elevators in high-rise buildings fire. Analyzing characteristics of the evacuation by elevators, the paper put forward an improved evacuation strategy and the corresponded improved evacuation model. In order to further prove the improved evacuation strategy can shorten the evacuation time, taking a certain building for example, this paper design many projects of evacuation, which based on different evacuation strategies. Finally, the paper modeling and simulating these projects with simulation software, results showed by simulation models can prove the large superiority of improved evacuation strategy.

Fire safety in university campuses should be studied carefully. However, such systematic studies are not yet found in Hong Kong. It is understood that evacuation is a key point. In this article, evacuation will be simulated at the 8th level of a university building with different guess design. Both horizontal and vertical transport will be considered. Occupant loading is based on the maximum allowed figures in the local codes. Variation of the occupant loading will also be simulated. Results are useful for working out the evacuation strategy.

Among researches on people evacuation under emergency, there are no deep touch of coordinating evacuation strategy of human and traffic, and also can not set models and simulate the whole process of evacuation. This research focused on the human evacuation under emergencies, divided the situations into Not Intervene and May Intervene, analyzed the coordination system and probed the model of coordinating evacuation. Based on the result of crowd simulation, the author could forecast the result of human evacuation and find the optimal traffic schedule proposal. The author took use of the improved Genetic Algorithm as well as the distributed coordinating simulation, finally found a systematic optimal scheduling program and revealed the internal regular pattern of coordinating evacuation.

Among researches on crowd flow evacuation under emergency, there are no deep touch of coordinating evacuation strategy of crowd and traffic, and also can not set models and simulate the whole picture of evacuation. The purpose of this research is to realize the coordinating evacuation of both traffic and crowd. The author divided the situations into Not Intervene and May Intervene, analyzed the coordination system and probed the model of coordinating evacuation. A series of coordinate evacuation method has been put forward based on swarm intelligence and simulation optimization. Based on the result of crowd simulation and Ant colony algorithm, in order to find the optimal traffic evacuation proposal, the author took use of the improved Genetic Algorithm as well as the distributed coordinating simulation, finally found a systematic optimal scheduling program. Also the internal regular pattern of coordinating evacuation has also been revealed. All these will provide support for emergency planning and decision making.

This paper presents a detailed description of an agent-based lift (elevator) model developed within building EXODUS software intended to represent evacuation scenarios. The main components of the lift model are described including the lift: kinematics, attributes and dispatch control. The agent–lift interaction model is also described, including the lift bank selection, the lift waiting area behaviour (wait location selection and wait duration) and the lift car selection and entry. The lift model is used to investigate a series of full building evacuation scenarios based on a hypothetical 50 floor building with four staircases and a population of 7840 agents. The analysis explores the relative merits of using up to 32 lifts (arranged in four banks) and various egress lift dispatch strategies to evacuate the entire building population. Findings from the investigation suggest that the most efficient evacuation strategy utilizes a combination of lifts and stairs to empty the building and clear the upper half of the building in minimum time. Combined stair lift evacuation times have been shown to be as much as 50% faster than stair only evacuation times. The introduction of the agent milling behaviour resulted in reductions in evacuation times compared with the same scenarios without milling behaviour.

Mount Merapi is one of the active volcanoes in Indonesia. Physical conditions of the Merapi environment which is suitable for farming and tourism attract people to stay in the area although it tends to be more prone to be affected when the eruption disaster occurs. Different public perceptions of disasters when such events occur can influence their behavior and hence community decision-making during evacuation process. Thus, evaluation of the evacuation planning based on population behavior is important to be considered. This study aims to determine attributes that influence the behavior of the people around Mount Merapi during evacuation phase and the relationship between those attributes in order to improve the evacuation strategy. Literature review, survey and interview were conducted to obtain the attributes influencing the behavioral attributes, while Damster-Shafer and Bayesian Network were used to evaluate correlation among attributes. The results indicate that experience of disaster training has a strong correlation to evacuation behavior, followed by trust to community leader and perception of danger. Those three attributes are then considered in the improvement of evacuation strategy.

This paper discusses details of developing an optimal zone-based vehicle evacuation strategy based on an optimization–simulation approach. The optimal egress strategy is obtained by solving a universal quickest flow problem, and the solution is implemented and evaluated in a mesoscopic simulation model. Evacuees would follow optimal routes to safe locations outside the hot zone and then select behaviorally realistic routes to their final destinations. Background traffic is included in the model to simulate more realistic traffic conditions. The route choice of background traffic in response to the evacuation strategy and driver information strategies is carefully addressed. Operational issues such as temporal loading intensity and queuing at parking lots are also modeled and discussed. The modeling framework has been applied to a bomb threat scenario at a football stadium. The case study shows that the proposed methods generate reasonable and meaningful results for the intended no-notice scenario.

The Vitae System model is referenced to provide a systematic framework for the adaptive evacuation strategy in a life-critical situation by integrating its three fundamental elements-survivability, vitality and communication. A preliminary model is proposed in the context of evacuation from a water related hazard. A multi-agent based evacuation simulation system is prototyped combining hydraulic model data for the case area of the Oike underground space in Kyoto, Japan. The impact of facility arrangement on evacuation decision-making is demonstrated.

This article investigates the effectiveness of simultaneous and staged evacuation strategies for hurricane evacuations of Galveston Island using agent-based microsimulation techniques. In the simultaneous strategy the entire population is informed to evacuate simultaneously, whereas in a staged evacuation strategy, people are informed to evacuate in a sequence. The results suggest that (1) the most efficient staged evacuation strategy can help reduce the evacuation time for Galveston Island by approximately one hour, (2) previous studies might have underestimated the evacuation time of Galveston, and (3) an evacuation under the rapid response assumption does not necessarily lead to an effective evacuation.

The increasing number of people in urban areas leads to development of modern cities and creation of taller high-rise buildings. The major concerns of governments, building developers and occupants are evacuation strategies and time required for evacuation of these buildings. In this article, three evacuation scenarios in 60-floor residential building were tested in order to highlight the importance of presenting evacuation time to occupants during an evacuation process, and ensure faster and safer evacuation in the building. In the first experiment, an ordinary case of evacuation has been evaluated, where evacuation time has not been available to the occupants. The second experiment evaluated the impact of presenting evacuation time for elevator arrival on evacuation strategy. In the third experiment, more occupants were re-directed towards elevators based on the quickest way in the building. The evacuation scenarios were simulated by using a continuous model to represent movements of occupants (Pathfinder). This study suggests that presenting the evacuation time of the quickest way to occupants, redirects more occupants towards the elevators, resulting in minimizing the total evacuation time.

This paper examines different evacuation strategies for systems where several rooms evacuate trough the same means of egress, using microscopic pedestrian simulation.As a case study, a medium-rise office building is considered. It was found that the standard strategy, whereby the simultaneous evacuation of all levels is performed, can be improved by a sequential evacuation, beginning with the lowest floor and continuing successively with each one of the upper floors after a certain delay. The importance of the present research is that it provides the basis for the design and implementation of new evacuation strategies and alarm systems that could significantly improve the evacuation of multiple rooms trough a common means of escape., 8 pages, 4 figures

With the point of view that building’s structure has different influences on evacuation, and focusing on the structural complexity of the building itself, the paper creatively divides the stairs into three basic areas from the point of architectural construction: step area, bend area, and influx area. Then, basing on the division of the stairs’ architectural construction, the paper will build a new and complete evacuation model in stairs by using the theory of fluid mechanics. The fundamentals of fluid mechanics and the ideas of fluid wave will be used to penetratingly analyze the crowd’s behaviors in the phases of evacuation in stairs, and the paper will finally put forward the sophisticated evacuation model using stairs in the way that build piecewise models. The new evacuation model using stairs not only can offer facilities for geotechnical analysis, but also can establish the theoretical basis to support studies on the more efficient evacuation strategy in high-rise buildings fire.

Disasters are quite experienced in our days. They are caused by floods, landslides, and building fires that is the main objective of this study. To cope with these unexpected events, precautions must be taken to protect human lives. The emphasis on disposal work focuses on the resolution of the evacuation problem in case of no-notice disaster. The problem of evacuation is listed as a dynamic network flow problem. Particularly, we model the evacuation problem as an earliest arrival flow problem with load dependent transit time. This problem is classified as NP-Hard. Our challenge here is to propose a metaheuristic solution for solving the evacuation problem. We define our objective as the maximization of evacuees during earliest periods of a time horizon T. The objective provides the evacuation of persons as soon as possible. We performed an experimental study on emergency evacuation from the tunisian children’s hospital. This work prompts us to look for evacuation plans corresponding to several situations where the network dynamically changes., {"references":["M. Anisuddin Nasir, L. Severien, and E. Dimogerontakis. (2014).Tabu\nSearch Optimization of Data Distribution in P2P Networks (Online).\nAvailable: http://web.ict.kth.se/ emmdim/docs/tabu.pdf","N. Baumann, and E. Kohler, \"Approximating earliest arrival flows with\nflow dependent transit times,\" Elsevier. Discrete Applied\nMathematics,vol. 155, pp. 161–171, Jan. 2007.","N. Baumann, \"Evacuation by Earliest Arrival Flows,\" Ph.D. dissertation, Fachb.Math.,Dortumund Univ., Aus Potsdam, 2007.","N. Baumann, and M. Skutella, \"Solving Evacuation Problems\nEfficiently: Earliest Arrival Flows with Multiple Sources,\" 47th Annual\nIEEE Symposiumon Foundations of Computer Science, FOCS 2006,\nBerkeley, CA,pp. 399–410, Oct. 2006.","R.E. Burkard, K. Dlaska, and B. Klinz.(2007, Feb.).Quickest Flow over\ntime. SIAM Journal on Computing (Online). 36(6), pp. 1600-1630.\nAvailable:http://researchweb.watson.ibm.com/people/l/lkf/papers/FS2.p\ndf","K. Bettina, and J. Gerhard, \"Minimum-cost dynamic flows: The series\nparallel case,\" Wiley Periodicals. Networks, vol. 43, pp. 153-162,\nMay.2004.","R. Challenger, C.W. Clegg, and M.A. Robinson, Understanding Crowd\nBehaviours, Practical Guidance and Lessons Identied. Researcher in\nOrganisational Psychology., London, TSO Rep. 1161–CB, 2010.","L.R. Ford, D.R. Fulkerson, and D.R, \"Constructing maximal dynamic\nflows from static flows\", Springer. Operations Research, vol. 6, pp. 419-\n433, May. 1958.","F. Glover. (1989, Summer.). Tabu Search Part I. Informs Journal on\ncomputing (Online). 1(3),pp. 190–206. Available:\nhttp://www.pubsonline.informs.org\n[10] D. Gale. (1959). Transient flows in networks. The Michigan\nMathematical Journal (Online). 6(1), pp. 59–63.Available:\nhttp://projecteuclid.org/euclid.mmj/1028998140\n[11] M. Gendreau, A. Hertz, G. Laporte. (1994, Oct.). A tabu search heuristic\nfor the vehicle routing problem. Management Science (Online). 40(10),\npp. 1276–1290. Available: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2661622\n[12] B. Hoppe, and E. Tardos. (2000, Feb.).The quickest transshipment\nproblem. Mathematics of Operations Research (Online). 25(1), pp. 36-\n62.Available: http://hdl.handle.net/1813/9000\n[13] H.W. Hamacher, and S.A. Tjandra. (2000). Mathematical modeling of\nevacuation problems: A state of the art. Pedestrian and Evacuation\nDynamics (Online). pp. 227–266. Available:\nhttps://kluedo.ub.unikl.de/files/1477/bericht24.pdf\n[14] E. Minieka, \"Maximal lexicographic and dynamic network\nflows,\"Informs. Operations Research, vol. 21, pp. 517-527, Apr. 1973.\n[15] F. Rita, \"An Evacuation Model for High Rise Buildings,\" in Proc.\n3thInter. Symposium in Fire Safety Science Conf. Scotland, 1991, pp.\n815–823.\n[16] Y. Shengxiang, J. Yong, and N. Trung.(2012, Oct.).Metaheuristics for\nDynamic Combinatorial Optimization Problems. Journal of Management\nMathematics (Online). 24, pp. 1–29. Available:\nhttp://www.tech.dmu.ac.uk/ syang/ECiDUE/Yang-IMAMAN13.pdf\n[17] P. Stefano, and M. Skutella, \"Shortest Path algorithms in transportation\nmodels: Classical and innovative aspects,\" C.N.R. Res. Lab., Pisa\nItalia.TR-97-06 (II), 1997.\n[18] S. Jayaswal, \"A Comparative Study of Tabu Search and Simulated\nAnnealing for Traveling Salesman Problem,\" Proj. Rep. Appl. Opt.\nUniv.Water., Canada. MSCI-703, (2008).\n[19] Y. Sheffi, Urban Transportation Networks: Equilibrium Analysis with\nMathematical Programming Methods. Prentice-Hall, Englewood\nCliffs,New Jersey, 1985.\n[20] S.A. Tjandra, \"Dynamic network optimization with application to the\nevacuation problem,\" Ph.D. dissertation, Dept. Fach. Math.,\nKaiserslautern Univ.,Genehmigte, 2003.\n[21] R. Stefan, S. Heika, and S. Mechthid, \"Earliest arrival flows on series\nparallel graphs\" Wiley Online Library. Networks, vol. 57, pp. 169-173,\nMar. 2011.\n[22] W. Bein, and P. Brucker, \"Minimum cost flow algorithms for series\nparallel networks\" Elsevier. Discrete Applied Mathematics, vol. 10,\npp.117-124, Feb. 1985."]}

The model case study consists of two towers, each made of 50 floors, with a total height of 207 m (678 ft). The building use is business, i.e., the model is an office building. The high-rise building consists of a lobby (floor 1) and a total of 46 floors designated to office use (from floor 3 to floor 48). The remaining floors are designated for mechanical, electrical and plumbing equipment (MEP floors).

When evacuating through fire environments, the presence of smoke may not only have a physiological impact on the evacuees but may also lead occupants to adapt their evacuation strategy through the adoption of another exit. This paper attempts to introduce this type of adaptive behaviour within the buildingEXODUS evacuation model through enabling occupants to make decisions concerning the selection of the most viable available exit during an evacuation involving fire. The development of this adaptive behaviour requires the introduction of several new capabilities namely, the representation of the occupants’ familiarity with the structure, the behaviour of an occupant that is engulfed in smoke and the behaviour of an occupant that is faced with a smoke barrier. The appropriateness of the redirection decision is dependent upon behavioural data gathered from real fire incidents (in the UK and USA) that is used to construct the redirection probabilities. The implementation is shown to provide a more complex and arguably more realistic representation of this behaviour than that provided previously.

This chapter discusses the elements of health-care evacuation decision-making. Several considerations can be anticipated to help the facility leadership better prepare and determine evacuation strategies. These strategies, if incorporated into an evacuation plan in advance of disaster, will facilitate the response team with guidance for varying possibilities of disaster impacts. Anticipating these determinants will, ideally, translate into more time being applied to implementing the strategy.

How to evacuate from affected area when an emergency occurs? How to escape efficiently from the affected area when the evacuees are divided into multiple groups with complete information sharing with each other? This paper studies the evacuation strategies of this problem from a convex region in the plane, and analyzes this problem in two scenarios: general plane and plane in grid network. In these two scenarios, we design evacuation strategies and analyze the evacuate ratio of strategies, respectively. In some cases, we show that the given strategies are optimal. Furthermore, we analyze the performance of strategies by comparing them in different situations.

Many fire evacuation models have been proposed in recent years to better simulate such as an emergency situation. However most of them do not respect a recommendation of fire evacuation experts regarding the fact that evacuees should follow the boundaries of obstacles or wall to find the exits when their visibility is limited by smoke. This paper presents an agent-based evacuation model with Smoke Effect and Blind Evacuation Strategy (SEBES) which respects that recommendation by integrating a model of smoke diffusion and its effect on the evacuee's visibility, speed, and evacuation strategy. The implementation of this model enables us to optimise the evacuation strategies taking into account the level of visibility. The obtained simulation results on a realistic model of the Metro supermarket of Hanoi confirm the important impact of smoke effect and blind evacuation strategy on the number of casualties.

Disasters often result in a tremendous cost to our society. Previously, wireless sensor networks have been proposed to provide information for decision making in postdisaster relief operations. The existing WSN solutions for postdisaster operations normally assume that the deployed sensor network can tolerate the damage caused by disasters and maintain its connectivity and coverage, even though a significant portion of nodes have been physically destroyed. Inspired by the “blackbox” technique, we propose that preserving “the last snapshot” of the whole network and transferring those data to a safe zone would be the most logical approach to provide necessary information for rescuing lives and control damages. In this paper, we introduce data evacuation (DE), an original idea that takes advantage of the survival time of the WSN, that is, the gap from the time when the disaster hits and the time when the WSN is paralyzed, to transmit critical data to sensor nodes in the safe zone. Numerical investigations reveal the effectiveness of our proposed DE algorithm.

Indonesia is one of the countries with the highest risk of natural disaster in the world. Therefore, Indonesia needs a disaster management method to minimize the number of casualties on any natural disasters happened in the country. This research developed a mobile application to record the medical conditions of natural disaster's victim on the android platform. The data gathered will be sent to the server via HTTP Post Protocol when the network connectivity is available. The data is sent in the form of XML files and image format. When the network connectivity is unavailable, the data will be stored within android device. The data stored in android devices can be displayed, changed, and deleted by the user of the application. Overall, the mobile application developed has functioned properly. It is expected that with this application the natural disaster response team can get the adequate information of the situation in disaster field more quickly and clearly so that the medical treatment and evacuation strategy can be determined more effectively and efficiently.

Disasters (e.g., earthquakes, flooding, tornadoes, oil spilling and mining accidents) often result in tremendous cost to our society. Previously, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have been proposed and deployed to provide information for decision making in post-disaster relief operations. The existing WSN solutions for post-disaster operations normally assume that the deployed sensor network can tolerate the damage caused by disasters and maintain its connectivity and coverage, even though a significant portion of nodes have been physically destroyed. In reality, however, this assumption is often invalid for disastrous events like earthquakes in large scale, limiting the relief capability of the existing solutions. Inspired by the “blackbox” technique in flight industry, we propose that preserving “the last snapshot” of the whole network and transferring those data to a safe zone would be the most logical approach to provide necessary information for rescuing lives and control damages. In this paper, we introduce Data Evacuation (DE), an original idea that takes advantage of the survival time of the WSN, i.e., the gap from the time when the disaster hits and the time when the WSN is paralyzed, to transmit critical data to sensor nodes in the safe area. Mathematically, the problem can be formulated as a nonlinear programming problem with multiple minimums in its support. We propose a gradient-based DE algorithm (GRAD-DE) to verify our DE strategy. Numerical investigations reveal the effectiveness of GRAD-DE algorithm.

This paper introduces a double multiagent architecture allowing the triage of victims in emergency scenarios and the automatic update of their medical condition. Gathering updated information about the medical condition of victims is critical for designing an optimal evacuation strategy that minimizes the number of casualties in the aftermath of an emergency. The proposed scheme, currently under development, combines Wireless Sensor Networks, an Electronic Triage Tag and a double multiagent system (Agilla-JADE) to achieve a low cost, no infrastructure based, efficient system.

This paper proposes an integrated macroscopic approach for controlling crowd evacuation from buildings. An efficient planning is always based on the knowledge of all variables characterizing the hazard and people motion, as described by the dynamic severity matrix. The possibility to use a feedback from the real scenario would be of enormous utility for the evacuation strategy, but still associated with a high computational load, as stated in the literature. This paper introduces a new algorithm, which uses online the entire severity matrix. A feedback from the system is also provided to simultaneously achieve a number of objectives, which are usually treated separately: to evacuate the maximum number of people and to do it in the shortest time by online updating the more suitable escape routes. To this aim, a route will be more or less suitable based on the crowd and the hazard levels. Simulation performed on randomly generated data showed the effectiveness of the new proposed approach.

In the presented paper, we propose to exploit routing organization for the purpose of managing network resources. According to our assumptions, we have the same quantity of materials, objects, tokens, tools etc. at our disposal in every node of the network. During network operation we must distribute resources between these nodes. It should be carried out as instantaneously and as economically as possible. Multi-Agent Systems are also used to deal with this kind of tasks and the centralised algorithms presented in this paper are to be used to measure the efficiency of the distributed MAS solution. From the logistical point of view, we have a sequence of stages with different states of tokens (objects). The criterion of optimal redeployment among nodes is, as usual, minimal cost and, indirectly, time as well. The levels of resources in nodes change as the node role changes from the supplier to the receiver and inversely. In practice, there are many applications of such tasks in logistics, military regrouping, elaboration of evacuation strategy, warehouse management etc. The distances between nodes can be fixed or may vary. This varied approach does not complicate our problem essentially, however we should remember, that this parameter influences the total redeployment cost.

Fire incidents inside passenger trains constitute a significant risk factor for life safety. Therefore, it is necessary to count on a suitable evacuation strategy, during the instants previous to the rail vehicle halt and the subsequently evacuation. In this paper, the evacuation of passengers from different fire scenarios and several evacuation conditions were investigated. The analysis was divided into two stages of the evacuation process considering two different high speed trains: (1) the movement and behaviour of passengers in fire scenarios inside the vehicle before the train stopped, and (2) the analysis of train evacuation under different conditions. The results, obtained by means of the egress model STEPS (see MacDonald, STEPS Simulation of Transient and Pedestrian Movements User Manual), allowed to determine the influence of the limitations of the different train geometries under different evacuation conditions, give an estimation of the evacuation times and analyse the impact of human parameters considered in the evacuation process.

The paper present two models to analyze this problem of the highway transportation and investigate what strategies can reduce the traffic congestion, which brought about by the earthquake. The models can provide better understanding of the congestion and give advice to the solution of this problem by making full use of the road network. Firstly the paper discuss what measurements can be used to judge a strategy of evacuation, which is from the disaster area to safety areas. Secondly develop a graph-based maximum-flow model and find how to achieve the maximum traffic flow from the disaster areas to the safety areas. In the finally, combining the current earthquake in Sichuan of China, the paper get the best solution of transport the casualties by highway in the least time. The result show that the method presented in this paper is very useful.

This paper analyzes the mechanism of the existence and extension of the queue on the increase of traffic delay and the loss of traffic capacity of the oversaturated intersections on arterial, points out:(1) the evacuation strategy of the queue must take "zero loss of arterial traffic capacity" as the precondition; (2) each intersection of the arterial uses maximal traffic capacity to evacuate the queue(namely eliminate the queue) only can achieve minimizing the delay of isolated intersection, can't reduce the increment of the delay of intersections. This paper presents the real time traffic control strategy of oversaturated intersections on urban traffic arterial, namely the "Equal Saturation Degree" strategy under the condition that allows queue existing in the small-scale(searching extreme low value of the delay of isolated intersection), which takes "zero loss of arterial traffic capacity" as the precondition, makes the arterial oversaturated traffic volume is equilibrium assigned in a certain amount of intersections on urban traffic arterial, so as to achieve coordinated extreme low value between the arterial travel delay increment and the scale of oversaturated intersections on urban traffic arterial, and improves the service level of intersections on urban traffic arterial under the condition of oversaturated

This paper describes how the fire safety of existing highrise residential buildings in Hong Kong that are over thirty-five years old is a major concern. These buildings have high occupancies but they have far fewer fire safety provisions than those specified in current fire codes. In order to understand the potential fire risk behind the old existing buildings, fire load density should be surveyed first. A sample of eight old highrise buildings was selected and surveyed. Both fixed and movable fire loads were reviewed. Fire load density was found to be high because of the excess storage of domestic fuel and movable fire load in cage houses is a concern. Four of the eight surveyed buildings have fire load density over the upper limit specified in the current code and the fire risks associated with storing too many combustibles were also studied. With such a high content of combustibles, it is more likely that big accidental fires will happen. Finally, occupant loading in each example building was also surveyed. This would provide important information for working out the evacuation strategy.

In this research funded by NSFC (50408038), an agent-based simulation model is developed for the human evacuation behaviour determined by a list of so-called architectural clues in the environment. A research method is introduced with an application for one of these clue types called Doorway. A six-variable model and a related set of virtual scenes were constructed and implemented in a Head-CAVE system, in which 102 subjects were tested as in an evacuation game. With the binary logit regression analysis a utility function is estimated indicating how these variables affect human choice on any pair of doorways in a scene. Evidence was found that the distance from the decision point to the doorway is not always the most important factor as it is assumed in the other evacuation models.

Communities throughout the world today face tremendous risks from many hazardous events, both natural and man-made. A region's evacuation strategy encompasses a variety of areas and needs, many of these interdependent and interrelated. Primary amongst these is the minimization of total evacuation time, often represented in models as the clearance time estimate (CTE). It is important for emergency managers to know CTE, but resources are scarce. A generic simulation model that approximates a region's CTE has been developed, and can serve as a surrogate for a user-specific network within a specific range of size and population

The Decision Support System (DSS) Emergency Planning is designed for use in the event of sea or river flooding. It makes accessible all the information related to the decision whether to evacuate an area. An important factor in this decision is the time required for the evacuation. The model used by the DSS Emergency Planning system to estimate the time required employs a strategy that prevents congestion on the road network in the area at risk. The use of the DSS Emergency Planning system during the proactive and prevention phases enables disaster containment organisations to prepare better for a flood situation. Moreover, all relevant information is saved and is therefore available for the post-disaster evaluation. The DSS Emergency Planning system can play a significant role in ensuring that the evacuation of an area at risk goes according to plan. In the future the DSS Emergency Planning system can also be used to evacuate people in the event of a nuclear, natural fire or extreme weather disaster.

The Decision Support System (DSS) Emergency Planning is designed for use in the event of sea or river flooding. It makes accessible all the information related to the decision whether to evacuate an area. An important factor in this decision is the time required for the evacuation. The model used by the DSS Emergency Planning system to estimate the time required employs a strategy that prevents congestion on the road network in the area at risk. The use of the DSS Emergency Planning system during the proactive and prevention phases enables disaster containment organisations to prepare better for a flood situation. Moreover, all relevant information is saved and is therefore available for the post-disaster evaluation. The DSS Emergency Planning system can play a significant role in ensuring that the evacuation of an area at risk goes according to plan. In the future the DSS Emergency Planning system can also be used to evacuate people in the event of a nuclear, natural fire or extreme weather disaster.

In the present work we investigate the egress times of a group of Argentine ants (Linepithema humile) stressed with different heating speeds. We found that the higher the temperature ramp is, the faster ants evacuate showing, in this sense, a group-efficient evacuation strategy. It is important to note that even when the life of ants was in danger, jamming and clogging was not observed near the exit, in accordance with other experiments reported in the literature using citronella as aversive stimuli. Because of this clear difference between ants and humans, we recommend the use of some other animal models for studying competitive egress dynamics as a more accurate approach to understanding competitive egress in human systems. Fil: Boari, Santiago. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Departamento de Biodiversidad y Biología Experimental. Laboratorio del Grupo de Estudio de Insectos Sociales; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina Fil: Josens, Roxana Beatriz. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Departamento de Biodiversidad y Biología Experimental. Laboratorio del Grupo de Estudio de Insectos Sociales; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina Fil: Parisi, Daniel Ricardo. Instituto Tecnológico de Buenos Aires; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina

One of the most critical issues for an evacuation is to design an effective evacuation strategy that could lead to the reduction of the total evacuation time. Previous studies demonstrated the advantage of certain staged evacuation strategies over the simultaneous evacuation strategy. This study aims to identify an effective yet feasible evacuation zoning structure for staged evacuation strategies of Galveston Island. The proposed zoning structure attempts to reduce the traffic pressure at the beginning of the IH-45 bridge, the only exit to the mainland. This study employs VISSIM, an agent-based microsimulation software package, to simulate the evacuation process. The sensitivity of the total evacuation time to time intervals between notifications of the staged evacuation is examined. The findings suggest that when an appropriate interval is selected, the staged evacuation using the proposed zoning structure is more effective than a simultaneous evacuation. A longer span between notifications could reduce the evacuation time of the last vehicle, but does not necessarily lead to the reduction of the total evacuation time.

This study addresses group formation and leadership during the evacuation of a high-rise office building due to fire. Rather than focussing on the psychological parameters of individual evacuee behaviour, the authors concentrate on the social context and organizational characteristics of the occupancy within which decisions about evacuation strategy, group formation and questions of leadership are made. A distinction is drawn between "emergent" (situational) and "imposed" (authoritative) leaders and between the processes of status emergence (achievement of influence) and status maintenance (retention of influence). Both leadership and group formation can be viewed not only in terms of psychological processes but also as the interaction between the normal organizational structure and the roles people assume and play within their group.

With the higher ultra-tall towers development, there are more difficult designs in evacuation. The collaborative evacuation among stairs and elevators was put forward based on analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of elevators for evacuation of ultra-tall tower. Then the principle of collaborative evacuation strategy and design key points were advised. At last, with an ultra-tall tower as an example, the evacuation strategy was introduced, and it was proved feasibly and superiorly according to compare with the different evacuation scenarios formulated by Pathfinder.

The aim of this report is to compare two disaster exercises' management of students with different backgrounds. To our knowledge nobody has ever compared two exercises, probably because of the difficulty in their evaluation. We implemented a tool for an objective evaluation [1] and we used it for this purpose.