A Generic Method to Optimize Instructions for the Control of Evacuations

A method is described to develop a set of optimal instructions to evacuate by car the population of a region threatened by a hazard. By giving these instructions to the evacuees, traffic conditions and therefore the evacuation efficiency can be optimized. The instructions, containing a departure time, a destination, and a route, are created using an optimization method based on ant colony optimization. Iteratively is searched for an approximation of the optimal evacuation instructions. The usefulness of the optimization method compared to other optimization methods is the simultaneous optimization of the departure time, destination, and route instructions instead of the optimization of only one or two of these variables for a dynamic instead of static evacuation problem. In a case study, the functioning of the method is illustrated. The relative high fitness in the case study of the set of instructions following from the optimization method compared with the fitness of a set of instructions set up by straightforward rules (like evacuating to the nearest destination) shows also the usefulness of applying an optimization method to create a set of evacuation instructions.