TY - JOUR
T1 - Validation of an agent-based building evacuation model with a school drill
AU - Poulos, Alan
AU - Tocornal, Felipe
AU - de la Llera, Juan Carlos
AU - Mitrani-Reiser, Judith
N1 - Funding Information:
This study was supported financially by the National Research Center for Integrated Natural Disaster Management CONICYT/FONDAP/15110017, and by FONDECYT [Grant Nos. 1141187, 1170836], from the Chilean National Commission for Scientific and Technological Research (CONICYT). The authors also thank the company GEOCOM for performing the laser scan of the school and the Colegio Inglés of Iquique for their support in obtaining data from the evacuation drill.
Funding Information:
This study was supported financially by the National Research Center for Integrated Natural Disaster Management CONICYT/FONDAP/15110017 , and by FONDECYT [Grant Nos. 1141187 , 1170836 ], from the Chilean National Commission for Scientific and Technological Research (CONICYT). The authors also thank the company GEOCOM for performing the laser scan of the school and the Colegio Inglés of Iquique for their support in obtaining data from the evacuation drill.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 Elsevier Ltd
PY - 2018/12
Y1 - 2018/12
N2 - An effective evacuation of buildings is critical to minimize casualties due to natural or anthropogenic hazards. Building evacuation models help in preparing for future events and shed light on possible shortcomings of current evacuation designs. However, such models are seldom compared or validated with real evacuations, which is a critical step in assessing their predictive capacities. This research focuses on the evacuation of a K-12 (kindergarten to 12th grade) school located within the tsunami inundation zone of Iquique, Chile. An agent-based evacuation model was developed to simulate the evacuation of approximately 1500 children and staff from the school during a global evacuation drill carried out for the entire city. The model simulates the motions of heterogeneous human agents, and the simulations were validated using video analysis of the real event. Resulting error estimations between predicted versus measured flow rates and evacuation times are 13.5% and 5.9%, respectively. The good agreement between the simulated and measured values can be attributed to the known distribution of students and staff at the start of the drill, and their known exposure to emergency preparedness protocols. However, the results presented herein show that this mathematical evacuation model can be used for logistical changes in the emergency planning.
AB - An effective evacuation of buildings is critical to minimize casualties due to natural or anthropogenic hazards. Building evacuation models help in preparing for future events and shed light on possible shortcomings of current evacuation designs. However, such models are seldom compared or validated with real evacuations, which is a critical step in assessing their predictive capacities. This research focuses on the evacuation of a K-12 (kindergarten to 12th grade) school located within the tsunami inundation zone of Iquique, Chile. An agent-based evacuation model was developed to simulate the evacuation of approximately 1500 children and staff from the school during a global evacuation drill carried out for the entire city. The model simulates the motions of heterogeneous human agents, and the simulations were validated using video analysis of the real event. Resulting error estimations between predicted versus measured flow rates and evacuation times are 13.5% and 5.9%, respectively. The good agreement between the simulated and measured values can be attributed to the known distribution of students and staff at the start of the drill, and their known exposure to emergency preparedness protocols. However, the results presented herein show that this mathematical evacuation model can be used for logistical changes in the emergency planning.
KW - Agent-based modeling
KW - Evacuation drill
KW - Evacuation model
KW - Human behavior
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85055087081&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85055087081&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.trc.2018.10.010
DO - 10.1016/j.trc.2018.10.010
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85055087081
SN - 0968-090X
VL - 97
SP - 82
EP - 95
JO - Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies
JF - Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies
ER -