Evacuation Simulation and Emergency Management Optimization in Urban Residential Communities

Urban residential communities usually have high density of residents. Timely and securely evacuation of residents in communities is of great importance during unexpected disasters or emergency events. To conduct better evacuation process in residential communities, this paper proposes a new framework of evacuation simulation and emergency management optimization. Compared with the traditional methods, the advantage of the proposed method lies into three aspects: (1) The new method highlights the easy-crowded areas in both indoor and outdoor evacuation. (2) Family behaviors are considered in evacuation. (3) Detailed emergency management optimization measures are spatially described on maps based on the analysis of the evacuation simulation results. A case study in Changhongfang Residential Community, Xuhui District, Shanghai, China was conducted to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed method.