Airport Emergency Evacuation Planning: An Agent-Based Simulation Study of Dirty Bomb Scenarios
Authored by Matthew Manley, Yong Seog Kim, Keith Christensen, Anthony Chen
Date Published: 2016
DOI: 10.1109/tsmc.2015.2497213
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Abstract
Emergency evacuation from airports is an important consideration given
the continuing occurrence of both natural and human caused disasters.
Unfortunately, the traditional evacuation-drill approach to prepare for
emergency situations presents several practical challenges at the scale
and magnitude required for airports. In this paper, we present an
agent-based model (ABM) called exitus which is capable of determining
the extent to which collective behavior and overall evacuation time of
passenger groups is affected by changes in the built environment for
large, complex structures. The model is unique because it explicitly
considers the physical and psychological characteristics of individuals
with disabilities. In our first experiment, several bomb simulation
scenarios were conducted at an international airport using exitus.
Several important findings were revealed including: 1) the importance of
stairway and exit configurations; 2) the inherent weaknesses of the pier
airport design in affecting timely evacuations; 3) who the most
vulnerable groups of people are; 4) the particular risk engendered from
crowded or complex building interiors for individuals with disabilities;
and 5) the potential problems caused by locating explosive detection
system machines near passenger processing areas. The results of a second
exploratory experiment also revealed the importance of realistically
modeling psychological attributes of individuals with disabilities and
their potential impact on collective evacuation performance. Overall the
findings demonstrated the model's ability to generate a common
operational picture capable of guiding preparedness efforts for both
public and private organizations encompassing a wide variety of
professional endeavor.
Tags
behavior
Design
population
Social force model
Pedestrian dynamics
Cellular-automaton
People
Disaster
Crowd
dynamics
Disabilities