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Effect of exit placement on evacuation plans

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  • Kurdi, Heba A.
  • Al-Megren, Shiroq
  • Althunyan, Reham
  • Almulifi, Asma

Abstract

Human behaviour while trying to escape a room via its main means of egress is an important issue in social science, complex systems research, and architectural planning. Disasters resulting from human crowding have increased in recent years. In such cases, it is important to consider several factors, including the smooth flow of pedestrians and the positions of obstacles and exits. This paper describes the effects of exit placement in environments congested with pedestrians. An evacuation system was designed and implemented with multiple exits in four different arrangements. The system utilised two artificial intelligence (AI) techniques—simulated annealing (SA) and depth-first search (DFS)—to examine the optimal balance between the placements of the various exits. Simulation and experimental results demonstrated that adjacently placed exits resulted in increased crowding at some exits over others when a nearest-exit path technique (DFS) was adopted as the evacuation strategy, resulting in longer evacuation times. Of the two examined evacuation techniques, SA proved superior, as it optimally balanced the pedestrian distribution over all available exits in all scenarios. In addition, the optimal-path technique (SA) did not suffer the ill-effects of adjacent exit placement. The simulation results confirm the importance of developing optimal evacuation plans, which could significantly outperform commonly employed nearest-exit evacuation strategies.

Suggested Citation

  • Kurdi, Heba A. & Al-Megren, Shiroq & Althunyan, Reham & Almulifi, Asma, 2018. "Effect of exit placement on evacuation plans," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 269(2), pages 749-759.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ejores:v:269:y:2018:i:2:p:749-759
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ejor.2018.01.050
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Abdelghany, Ahmed & Abdelghany, Khaled & Mahmassani, Hani & Alhalabi, Wael, 2014. "Modeling framework for optimal evacuation of large-scale crowded pedestrian facilities," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 237(3), pages 1105-1118.
    2. Fry, John & Binner, Jane M., 2016. "Elementary modelling and behavioural analysis for emergency evacuations using social media," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 249(3), pages 1014-1023.
    3. Daoliang, Zhao & Lizhong, Yang & Jian, Li, 2006. "Exit dynamics of occupant evacuation in an emergency," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 363(2), pages 501-511.
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    Cited by:

    1. Ștefan Ionescu & Ionuț Nica & Nora Chiriță, 2021. "Cybernetics Approach Using Agent-Based Modeling in the Process of Evacuating Educational Institutions in Case of Disasters," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(18), pages 1-29, September.
    2. Xuefeng Zhao & Lingli Huang & Zhe Sun & Xiongtao Fan & Meng Zhang, 2023. "Design Optimization of Building Exit Locations Based on Building Information Model and Ontology," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(17), pages 1-18, August.
    3. Heba Kurdi & Amal Alzuhair & Dana Alotaibi & Hesah Alsweed & Noor Almoqayyad & Razan Albaqami & Alhanoof Althnian & Najla Alnabhan & A. B. M. Alim Al Islam, 2022. "Crowd Evacuation in Hajj Stoning Area: Planning through Modeling and Simulation," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(4), pages 1-18, February.
    4. Ren, Huan & Yan, Yuyue & Gao, Fengqiang, 2021. "Variable guiding strategies in multi-exits evacuation: Pursuing balanced pedestrian densities," Applied Mathematics and Computation, Elsevier, vol. 397(C).
    5. Kurdi, Heba & Almulifi, Asma & Al-Megren, Shiroq & Youcef-Toumi, Kamal, 2021. "A balanced evacuation algorithm for facilities with multiple exits," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 289(1), pages 285-296.
    6. Gao, Jin & He, Jun & Gong, Jinghai, 2020. "A simplified method to provide evacuation guidance in a multi-exit building under emergency," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 545(C).

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