EVACUATION SIMULATION IN NAGOYA STATION AREA IN CASE OF BIG EARTHQUAKE TO HAPPEN IN DOWNTOWN OF LARGE CITY

Each local government has developed its emergency action plan by law for achieving safety and security of its citizens in case of big earthquakes to happen in its densely populated regions. A prediction of temporal change of the number of pedestrian evacuees described in the emergency action plan for the Nagoya Station area was evaluated quantitatively by our simulations. It has been found that the prediction has a great deal of safety margins by analyzing the crowd densities and speeds of pedestrian evacuees. If the predicted temporal change rate can be realized, there will be a very low possibility of traffic problems and accidents by crowds to happen in evacuation routes. In case of the temporal change rate being increased by 4 times of the predicted one, it has been found that the congestion level grows fast in a short period of time in a crossing area of pedestrian evacuees having different goals and no pedestrian traffics cannot be allowed in the crossing area.