Agent-based evacuation simulation for building structure evaluation

Building design has a large impact on emergency evacuation. To identify the best location of doors in a room for fast evacuation, building egress times were computed using agent-based simulation. Human behavior in a building was based on a social force model. The evacuation route was based on the shortest path in a 3D geometric network in a GIS environment. Our results indicated that building egress time is minimized when doorways are located to make the egress path shortest. The integration of an agent-based model and 3D geometric network can be applied further to evaluate more complex structures such as multi-story buildings and subway stations.