1 research outputs found
Evacuation time estimate for a total pedestrian evacuation using queuing network model and volunteered geographic information
Estimating city evacuation time is a non-trivial problem due to the
interaction between thousands of individual agents, giving rise to various
collective phenomena, such as bottleneck formation, intermittent flow and
stop-and-go waves. We present a mean field approach to draw relationships
between road network spatial attributes, number of evacuees and resultant
evacuation time estimate (ETE). We divide medium sized UK cities into a
total of catchment areas which we define as an area where all agents
share the same nearest exit node. In these catchment areas, 90% of agents are
within km of their designated exit node. We establish a characteristic
flow rate from catchment area attributes (population, distance to exit node and
exit node width) and a mean flow rate in free-flow regime by simulating total
evacuations using an agent based `queuing network' model. We use these
variables to determine a relationship between catchment area attributes and
resultant ETE. This relationship could enable emergency planners to make rapid
appraisal of evacuation strategies and help support decisions in the run up to
a crisis.Comment: 6 pages, 8 figure