An evacuation guider location optimization method based on road network centrality measures

Evacuation plays an important role in the response process towards inevitable disasters and emergencies. Compared with the large number of evacuees, the number of evacuation guiders is much smaller. The evacuation guider location problem is of great practical importance, since the locations of guiders impact evacuation process and evacuation policy optimization. In general, it is difficult to identify the optimal locations of guiders due to the partial information and partial control, the complexity of evacuation process, and the large state and decision spaces. In this paper, we consider this important problem and make the following main contributions. First, we use the event-based optimization (EBO) theory to model the evacuation problem. Second, we develop an evacuation guider location optimization method based on road network centrality measures and use this method to optimize the evacuation process. Third, we evaluate the performance of our method through numerical results. We hope this work brings insight in evacuation guider location optimization problem.