Integrating multi-agent evacuation simulation and multi-criteria evaluation for spatial allocation of urban emergency shelters

ABSTRACTThe timely and secure evacuation of residents to nearby urban emergency shelters is of great importance during unexpected disaster events. However, evacuation and allocation of shelters are seldom examined as a whole, even though they are usually closely related tasks in disaster management. To conduct better spatial allocation of emergency shelters in cities, this study proposes a new method which integrates techniques of multi-agent system and multi-criteria evaluation for spatial allocation of urban emergency shelters. Compared with the traditional emergency shelter allocation methods, the proposed method highlights the importance of dynamic emergency evacuation simulations for spatial allocation suitability analysis. Three kinds of agents involved in evacuation and sheltering procedures are designed: government agents, shelter agents, and resident agents. Emergency evacuations are simulated based on the interactions of these agents to find potential problems, for example, time-consuming evacua...