Intelligent optimization method for the evacuation routes of dense crowds on cruise ships

Abstract

Evacuation route optimization is a crucial problem in emergency management of cruise ships. To solve a multi-route planning problem of evacuating all passengers and crews on cruise ships, this study proposes an improved artificial fish swarm algorithm (IAFSA). Different from the common single-route artificial fish swarm algorithm, IAFSA uses the entire swarm of fishes to simulate the behavior of all the passengers and crews during evacuation, and fishes works cooperatively to form a set of evacuation routes. The impact of crowding on speed is considered, waiting and distribution methods is introduced into the IAFSA to solve the crowd problem. Real cruise ship model and crowd distribution data are used for experiments. Simulation results demonstrate that IAFSA is a promising approach to solve the emergency evacuation route planning problem.