Pedestrian evacuation planning: Unveiling evacuation routes via column generation

Evacuation drills are critical to evaluate emergency preparedness and infrastructure capacity. Before conducting drills, it is necessary to design the evacuation routes that people are likely to follow in a real evacuation. In this paper, we present a path-oriented optimization model for evacuation planning. To solve this model, we propose a column-oriented approach in which a master problem assigns people to evacuation paths, while an auxiliary problem generates feasible evacuation paths. To recreate possible evacuation drills, we embed the column generation method in an optimization-based simulation procedure that mimics the evacuation dynamics and unveils critical evacuation routes that are likely to become congested. To illustrate the applicability of our method, we recreated a real evacuation drill conducted in a university campus. Our results support evacuation planners that often make infrastructure decisions with the goal of enhancing evacuation dynamics with the commendable goal of saving lives.