Agent-Based Evacuation Model Considering Field Effects and Government Advice

Authored by Joel S E Teo, Jan-Dirk Schmoecker, Florin Leon, Joe Y-T Li, Jun Ji, Gabriela Atanasiu, Eiichi Taniguchi

Date Published: 2015

DOI: 10.3141/2532-15

Sponsors: No sponsors listed

Platforms: No platforms listed

Model Documentation: UML Other Narrative Mathematical description

Model Code URLs: Model code not found

Abstract

This research aimed to incorporate social capital, defined as information flow from government to population and information flow within a population, into an agent-based evacuation model. The importance of social capital based on lessons from past disasters of broken communications from key decision makers was considered as well as the effectiveness of crowd influence during an evacuation, which is vital to future evacuation plans or infrastructure improvements to resolve congestion on critical links or points. The emphasis of the study was to describe the modeling framework and implementation into an agent-based modeling framework. The software was tested with an illustrative case study. The key findings demonstrated a higher survival rate if evacuees tended to heed the government's evacuation guidance whenever it was available or to follow the evacuation advice of the neighboring crowd.

Tags

Optimization