MAS-Based Evacuation Simulation of an Urban Community during an Urban Rainstorm Disaster in China

Abstract

The frequent occurrence of urban waterlogging constantly affects cities’ stability, bringing about a lot of economic losses and casualties. Coupled with the deficient rescue activities, waterlogging often exacerbates the impact of urban rainstorm disasters. By setting up a diverse distribution of shelters and various types of pedestrians, the evacuation route choice of pedestrians in an urban rainstorm disaster is simulated and analyzed through multi-agent system simulation. Then, clustering analysis is applied to discover population characteristics in different survival scenarios. The simulations for sustainable rescue after pedestrians reach the shelters are also carried out. It was found that the pedestrians’ herd mentality and the distribution of shelters have a significant impact on the success rate of post-disaster evacuation. The results could help pedestrians to make decisions in the evacuation. The wide scope of the shelters’ allocation facilitates the effect of disaster relief.