Multiagent-Based Large-Scale Evacuation Simulation
Gregor Lämmel, Kai Nagel · Transportation Research Board 88th Annual MeetingTransportation Research Board · 2009
The evacuation of whole cities or even regions is an important problem, as demonstrated by recent events such as evacuation of Houston in the case of Hurricane Rita or the evacuation of coastal cities in the case of tsunamis. A robust and flexible simulation framework for such large-scale disasters helps to predict the evacuation process. Furthermore, it is possible to recognize bottle-necks in advance, so that an elimination of those bottlenecks is possible. This should lead to a better preparedness for an event of evacuation for cities or regions that face a high risk of natural disasters. Existing methods are either geared towards smaller problems (e.g. Cellular Automata techniques or methods based on differential equations) or are not microscopic (e.g. methods based on dynamic traffic assignment). This paper presents a technique that is both microscopic and capable to process large problems. The simulation was applied to the Indonesian city of Padang. The city faces a high risk of being inundated by an earth quake triggered tsunami.