Automatic layout design solution

Abstract

A well designed space must consider not only ease of movement, but also ensure safety in a panic situation, such as emergency evacuation in a stadium or hospital. The movement statistics connected with pedestrian flow can be very helpful in feasible layout design. In this study, we examined four-way pedestrian movement statistics generated from heuristic search techniques to find feasible classroom layout solutions. The aim of the experiment is to compare how fast and effective the algorithms can generate automatic solutions to the layout. Experiments from our preliminary study have shown that promising results for simulated annealing and genetic algorithm operator algorithms in pedestrian simulation modelling. Our experimental results are compared with current classroom layouts. We find a feasible layout with a staggering shaped and wider lane, objects shift aside to the walls creating bigger lanes in the middle of layout, or escape routes are created surrounding the clustered objects. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.