An automatic flood escape route identification method for existing underground spaces: From the perspective of multi-objective trade-offs

Frequent occurrences of flood disasters pose a significant threat to the safety of urban residents. Although research on emergency management for building disasters has made progress, it has primarily focused on fire incidents, lacking comprehensive studies on flood disasters. Furthermore, existing studies on optimal escape route planning predominantly relied on single criteria, resulting in a limited evaluation perspective. To address this gap, this research introduces a dynamic, systematic, and versatile framework for optimizing escape routes in flood scenarios, which incorporates Building Information Modeling (BIM), flood fluid simulation, crowd evacuation simulation, and weighted multi-criteria evaluation. The effectiveness and superiority of the framework are demonstrated through a case study of an underground facility used for university teaching and research. The outcomes of this research contribute to bridging the theoretical gap in emergency management of underground spaces during flood disasters, providing valuable insights to enhance the emergency preparedness of buildings in flood-prone areas.