Optimization of Evacuation Measures Under Uncertainty

Abstract

In this paper, an approach to optimize evacuation measures under uncertainty is presented. Evacuation measures consist of the supply of instructions and information to evacuees and traffic management measures with the goal to optimize the efficiency of an evacuation. The uncertainty in the evacuation problem is related to the evacuees (the demand and the behavior of people) and the hazard (location, time, and intensity). In the paper, criteria are given to evaluate the effectiveness of evacuation measures for an evacuation problem with scenario-based uncertainty (the uncertainty is translated into scenarios which could occur). An optimization method presented in earlier research is adapted to make the method suitable to optimize evacuation instructions (consisting of a departure time, a destination, and a route) under uncertainty. In a case study, the method is applied for a specific uncertainty, namely hazard uncertainty represented by four different scenarios of the course of the hazard over time and space. Although the scenario-based approach has some restrictions for real applications, the case study shows the usefulness of dealing with uncertainty in the evacuation problem: the dependency of the effectiveness of the instructions on the real hazard scenario becomes lower.