Emergency evacuation problem for a multi-source and multi-destination transportation network: mathematical model and case study

Disasters such as earthquake or tsunami can easily take the lives of thousands of people and millions worth of property in a fleeting moment. A successful emergency evacuation plan is critical in response to disasters. In this paper, we seek to investigate the multi-source, multi-destination evacuation problem. First, we construct a mixed integer linear programming model. Second, based on K shortest paths and user equilibrium, we propose a novel algorithm (hereafter KPUE), whose complexity is polynomial in the numbers of nodes and evacuees. Finally, we demonstrate the effectiveness of algorithm KPUE by a real evacuation network in Shanghai, China. The numerical examples show that the average computation time of the proposed algorithm is 95% less than that of IBM ILOG CPLEX solver and the optimality gap is no more than 5%.