Micro-Level Emergency Response: 3D Geometric Network and an Agent-Based Model

Abstract

This chapter discusses a micro-scale emergency response model that integrates GIS with an agent-based model. The first part of the chapter explains 3D geometric network construction for buildings using GIS. Computer-aided design data used commonly for building blueprints have been converted to a 3D geometric network through wall extraction and 3D topology construction. Two wall extraction methods (vector-based medial-axis transformation and raster-based thinning) are tested. The resulting 3D geometric network provides agent-based models with routing information to determine the shortest path to outer exits of a building. The second part explains what an agent-based model for building evacuation entails. In the building evacuation simulation, the only moving agents considered are human beings. To model human behavior, we adopted a generalized force model to incorporate a mixture of socio-psychological and physical forces of human-to-human and human-to-wall interactions influencing agents’ behavior. We tested two simple evacuation scenarios: evacuation with and without a jamming situation by enforcing different numbers of people in a room. As expected, the results showed that the average rate of evacuation increased continuously before jams, decreased during jams, and eventually increased again as individuals escape from the jams.