An agent-based discrete event simulation approach for modeling large-scale disaster evacuation network

Abstract

The need for appropriate evacuation strategies is always a daunting problem when confronted with a large-scale natural disaster. The challenge is to find a policy that maximizes the number of survivors and minimizes the total cost simultaneously under a set of resource and geographic constraints. We develop an agent-based discrete event simulation (ABDES) evacuation framework based on an embedded geographic information system (GIS) module to solve a network evacuation problem that involves multiple candidate shelters, multi-priorities evacuees and several vehicle types. The evacuation framework consists of three interacting components: a disaster scenario generator module, a GIS module for analyzing an evacuation network, and an ABDES module. We conduct experiments using the city of Galveston as an example. The evacuation framework offers insight to decision-makers about the number and location of shelters, allocation and assignment of evacuation vehicles, and distribution of relief resources that are required to complete a large-scale evacuation.