Simulation experiment of routing strategy for evacuees and disaster responders.

Under urban crisis situations, one of the most important response tasks is routing the vehicles. Such crisis initiates a massive evacuation from the disaster scene to the outside; at the same time, crisis responders have to enter the scene. Whereas we need routes for responders, current disaster response plans frequently dictate to turn bidirectional roads into one-ways to ensure quick evacuation. This routing conflict should be resolved prior to actual crises, and we approached this problem with simulation based experiments. We modeled and simulated the urban traffic network, the responder agents and the evacuation agents. Our major decision factor is how to choose road lane utilization to facilitate the evacuation as well as the response. We evaluated the efficiency of the route planning with responder arrivals and evacuation durations. The results may provide some insights to disaster managers or authorities under crisis.