Multi-agent Transport Simulation for Regional Evacuation Processes

As periodic wildfires in the southern California, USA, or the Fukushima Daiici nuclear disaster have shown, man-made and natural disasters might make human areas or regions (temporarily) inhabitable or the safety of inhabitants might be threatened severely, and the evacuation of this area required. One major decision in facing disasters is whether to evacuate or not. Criteria for making that decision on a civil defence level are: the time available for evacuation, the socio-economic situation, the warning systems available, the severity and time evolution of the thread, and so on, and so forth. One major question is whether the available safe evacuation time (ASET) is larger than the required safe evacuation time (RSET). Another one is the feasibility traffic patterns that will result from an evacuation warning. The method presented in this paper is able to determine the RSET.