Pedestrian-Vehicles Interaction During Evacuation: Agent-Based Hybrid Evacuation Modelling of Southeast Asian Cities

Southeast Asian cities such as Jakarta (Indonesia) present traffic patterns that differ importantly from ‘Western’ cities. This includes the typology of vehicles, lane utilization and distinctions between pedestrian and vehicular routes. Such differences are maintained, and sometimes accentuated, during a sudden evacuation, such as the one that might occur as consequence of a (actual or perceived) tsunami hazard. Most of the commonly used traffic models are not designed for reproducing these patterns, assuming that the vehicles would follow queuing patterns or lane divisions, and allowing a limited interaction between pedestrians and vehicles. In reality, during a non-staged sudden evacuation, the portion of the road occupied by pedestrians can vary significantly, seemingly depending on the ratio between pedestrians and vehicles. This paper presents the results of a study aiming to develop a hybrid evacuation model able to target these issues. In particular, the model aims to describe the vehicular traffic consistently with the local traffic patterns, and represent a strong interrelationship between vehicular and pedestrian traffic, under the constraint of modelling a large number of evacuees. Results from preliminary applications are presented and compared with existing models.