A Stage-Wise Path Planning Approach for Crowd Evacuation in Buildings

We propose a new path planning approach for crowd evacuation in buildings. Based on the crowd distribution at current moment, our approach is capable of predicting congestion at intersections in the near future so that a more reasonable path can be achieved than previous method. We also introduce a stage-wise path planning mechanism to adjust routes to respond to the dynamic changes of crowd distribution. Experimental results on several evacuation scenarios indicate that our method can reduce congestion comparing with previous method so that more reasonable evacuation routes can be achieved and the evacuation time is shortened.