An Adaptive Simulation Tool for Evacuation Scenarios

Abstract

Building useful and efficient models and tools for a varied audience, such as evacuation simulators for scientists, engineers and crisis managers, can be tricky. Even good models can fail in providing information when the user’s tools for the model are scarce of resources. The aim of this work is to propose a new tool that covers the most required features in evacuation scenarios. This paper starts with a review of current software, prototypes and models simulating evacuation scenarios, by discussing their required and desired features. Based on this overview, we propose our simulator comparing it with other models and commercial tools. Moreover, we discuss the importance of building simulators that cover the minimum requirements to avoid the risk of building inefficient models or tools that do not provide enough insights for users to take right decisions in terms of security policies in crowded events. The implications of this work are to present a new simulation tool and to start a discussion in this research field on mandatory features of evacuation simulation tools that will provide valuable information to users and to find out what the criteria are to define these features.