Multi Agent-based Rescue Simulation for Disabled Persons with the Help of Volunteers in Emergency Situation

Abstract

In this paper, we present a multi agent-based simulation model for helping disabled persons in emergency situation. This simulation model allows the interactions among victims and volunteers during the evacuation process. Disabled persons and volunteers are modeled as agents with different behaviors. When the decisions to help disabled people are made, the volunteers will apply flexible technique by making choices between the shortest route and the least congested route according to route network conditions for every simulation time-step. The shortest path algorithm of Dijkstra and the reinforcement learning method of Q-learning algorithm are used to find the appropriate path to reach to the disabled people. In order to represent the route network in more realistic way, the GIS route network model is used. The simulation results indicate that the simulation using the flexible technique has less rescue time than these using two methods respectively.