An analytical method to calculate station evacuation capacity

Abstract

The major objective of this work was to calculate evacuation capacity and solve the optimal routing problem in a given station topology from a network optimization perspective where station facilities were modelled as open finite queueing networks with a multi-objective set of performance measures. The optimal routing problem was determined so that the number of evacuation passengers was maximized while the service level was higher than a certain criterion. An analytical technique for modelling open finite queueing networks, called the iteration generalized expansion method (IGEM), was utilized to calculate the desired outputs. A differential evolution algorithm was presented for determining the optimal routes. As demonstrated, the design methodology which combines the optimization and analytical queueing network models provides a very effective procedure for simultaneously determining the service level and the maximum number of evacuation passengers in the best evacuation routes.