Simulating the evacuation of very large populations in large domains using a parallel implementation of the buildingEXODUS evacuation model

Computer egress simulation has potential to be used in large scale incidents to provide live advice to incident commanders. While there are many considerations which must be taken into account when applying such models to live incidents, one of the first concerns the computational speed of simulations. No matter how important the insight provided by the simulation, numerical hindsight will not prove useful to an incident commander. Thus for this type of application to be useful, it is essential that the simulation can be run many times faster than real time. Parallel processing is a method of reducing run times for very large computational simulations by distributing the workload amongst a number of CPUs. In this paper we examine the development of a parallel version of the buildingEXODUS software. The parallel strategy implemented is based on a systematic partitioning of the problem domain onto an arbitrary number of sub-domains. Each sub-domain is computed on a separate processor and runs its own copy of the EXODUS code. The software has been designed to work on typical office based networked PCs but will also function on a Windows based cluster. Two evaluation scenarios using the parallel implementation of EXODUS are described; a large open area and a 50 story high-rise building scenario. Speed-ups of up to 3.7 are achieved using up to six computers, with high-rise building evacuation simulation achieving run times of 6.4 times faster than real time.

Predicting the performance of passenger ships using computer simulation

When designing a new passenger ship or naval vessel or modifying an existing design, how do we ensure that the proposed design is safe from an evacuation point of view? In the wake of major maritime disasters such as the Herald of Free Enterprise and the Estonia and in light of the growth in the numbers of high density, high-speed ferries and large capacity cruise ships, issues concerned with the evacuation of passengers and crew at sea are receiving renewed interest. In the maritime industry, ship evacuation models are now recognised by IMO through the publication of the Interim Guidelines for Evacuation Analysis of New and Existing Passenger Ships including Ro-Ro. This approach offers the promise to quickly and efficiently bring evacuation considerations into the design phase, while the ship is "on the drawing board" as well as reviewing and optimising the evacuation provision of the existing fleet. Other applications of this technology include the optimisation of operating procedures for civil and naval vessels such as determining the optimal location of a feature such as a casino, organising major passenger movement events such as boarding/disembarkation or restaurant/theatre changes, determining lean manning requirements, location and number of damage control parties, etc. This paper describes the development of the maritimeEXODUS evacuation model which is fully compliant with IMO requirements and briefly presents an example application to a large passenger ferry.