The Agent-Based Modeling Applied to Evacuation Strategies
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.32870/recibe.v15i1.435Keywords:
Agent-Based Models, Evacuation Models, Emergency Scenarios, Building SafetyAbstract
Buildings and their infrastructures can become fragile in the face of disasters, whether natural or man-made. In these scenarios, ensuring people's safety is a priority, and evacuation models have become key tools for this purpose. Their main purpose is to realistically simulate how a large group of people can move towards the available exits efficiently during an emergency. This paper presents an agent-based evacuation model where people, obstacles and exits interact dynamically. The model relies on only five rules to reproduce the evacuation process, but is able to incorporate complex phenomena such as traffic jams and irregular movements that often appear under pressure. Unlike other approaches, this model introduces common behaviors in situations of extreme stress, such as falls, disorientation or panic episodes, allowing a closer representation of what actually happens in critical situations. To evaluate the performance of the proposal, several experiments and case studies were carried out in real urban environments. The results show that the model not only more closely reproduces human behavior during an evacuation, but also provides valuable information to improve emergency planning and response.References
An, S., Wang, Z., & Cui, J. (2015). Integrating Regret Psychology to Travel Mode Choice for a Transit-Oriented Evacuation Strategy. Sustainability 2015, Vol. 7, Pages 8116-8131, 7(7), 8116–8131. https://doi.org/10.3390/SU7078116
Bayram, V. (2016). Optimization models for large scale network evacuation planning and management: A literature review. Surveys in Operations Research and Management Science, 21(2), 63–84. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.SORMS.2016.11.001
Ensing, S., & Amrit, C. (2023). Agent-Based Modelling and Simulation of Public Transport to Identify Effects of Network Changes on Passenger Flows. Lecture Notes in Computer Science (Including Subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics), 13741 LNCS, 373–385. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27199-1_37
Fernández-Garza, A., Hernández-Vega, H., Fernández-Garza, A., & Hernández-Vega, H. (2019). Estudio de la movilidad peatonal en un centro urbano: un caso en Costa Rica. Revista Geográfica de América Central, 1(62), 244–277. https://doi.org/10.15359/RGAC.62-1.10
Heard, D., Dent, G., Schifeling, T., & Banks, D. (2015). Agent-based models and microsimulation. Annual Review of Statistics and Its Application, 2(Volume 2, 2015), 259–272. https://doi.org/10.1146/ANNUREV-STATISTICS-010814-020218/CITE/REFWORKS
Helbing, D. (2012). Agent-based modeling. Understanding Complex Systems, 25–70. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-24004-1_2/FIGURES/5_2
Hirtz, J., Stone, R. B., McAdams, D. A., Szykman, S., & Wood, K. L. (2002). A functional basis for engineering design: Reconciling and evolving previous efforts. Research in Engineering Design - Theory, Applications, and Concurrent Engineering, 13(2), 65–82. https://doi.org/10.1007/S00163-001-0008-3/METRICS
Hu, Y., Zhang, L., Zhang, Z., Li, Z., & Tang, Q. (2024). Matheuristic and learning-oriented multi-objective artificial bee colony algorithm for energy-aware flexible assembly job shop scheduling problem. Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence, 133, 108634. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.ENGAPPAI.2024.108634
Islas-Toski, M., Cuevas, E., Pérez-Cisneros, M., & Escobar, H. (2024). Agent-Based Evacuation Modeling: Enhancing Building Safety in Emergency Scenarios. Smart Cities 2024, Vol. 7, Pages 3165-3187, 7(6), 3165–3187. https://doi.org/10.3390/SMARTCITIES7060123
Li, Y., Chen, M., Zheng, X., Dou, Z., & Cheng, Y. (2020). Relationship between behavior aggressiveness and pedestrian dynamics using behavior-based cellular automata model. Applied Mathematics and Computation, 371, 124941. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.AMC.2019.124941
Liu, Z., Wang, Z., Chen, L., Tang, T., & Shen, Z. (2024). An agent-based approach to simulating evacuation in elderly care facilities with disabled older adults. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 113, 104815. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.IJDRR.2024.104815
Macal, C. M., & North, M. J. (2005). Tutorial on agent-based modeling and simulation. Proceedings - Winter Simulation Conference, 2005, 2–15. https://doi.org/10.1109/WSC.2005.1574234
Page, C. Le, Bazile, D., Becu, N., Bommel, P., Bousquet, F., Etienne, M., Mathevet, R., Souchère, V., Trébuil, G., & Weber, J. (2013). Agent-Based Modelling and Simulation Applied to Environmental Management. 499–540. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-93813-2_19
Percy, C., Chen, Y. F., Bibi, A., Coles-Jordan, D., Dodson, E., Evans, T., Klingberg, D., & Van Der Bruggen, M. (2011). The Contribution Of Human Psychology To Disaster Management: Mitigation, Advance Preparedness, Response And Recovery. WIT Transactions on The Built Environment, 119, 195–208. https://doi.org/10.2495/DMAN110181
Realizan simulacros en los Hospitales Civiles de Guadalajara | Coordinación General de Comunicación Social. (n.d.). Retrieved July 6, 2025, from https://comsoc.udg.mx/noticia/realizan-simulacros-en-los-hospitales-civiles-de-guadalajara
Ronchi, E. (2016). ScienceDirect A fire safety engineering perspective on crowd evacuation dynamics Comment on “Human behaviours in evacuation crowd dynamics: From modelling to ‘big data’ toward crisis management” by Nicola Bellomo et al. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.plrev.2016.05.014
Seyfried, A., Steffen, B., & Lippert, T. (2006). Basics of modelling the pedestrian flow. Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and Its Applications, 368(1), 232–238. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.PHYSA.2005.11.052
Siegenfeld, A. F., & Bar-Yam, Y. (2020). An Introduction to Complex Systems Science and Its Applications. Complexity, 2020(1), 6105872. https://doi.org/10.1155/2020/6105872
Sun, Y., Forrister, A., Kuligowski, E. D., Lovreglio, R., Cova, T. J., & Zhao, X. (2024). Social vulnerabilities and wildfire evacuations: A case study of the 2019 Kincade fire. Safety Science, 176, 106557. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.SSCI.2024.106557
Xie, J., Wei, N., & Gao, Q. (2024). Assessing spatiotemporal population density dynamics from 2000 to 2020 in megacities using urban and rural morphologies. Scientific Reports, 14(1), 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1038/S41598-024-63311-5;SUBJMETA=172,2787,4081,704,844;KWRD=ENVIRONMENTAL+IMPACT,SOCIOECONOMIC+SCENARIOS
Downloads
Published
Versions
- 2026-03-04 (2)
- 2026-03-04 (1)
