Intelligent Evacuation System for Flood Disaster

Sefrioui Imane, Cherrat Loubna, Ezziyyani Mostafa, and Essaaidi Mohammed

Abstract. The main objective of this research is to find the best evacuation path dur-
ing a flood disaster emergency situation. The challenge lies in how to manage this
situation that has dynamic changing conditions and strict time constraints. In this pa-
per, we propose an adaptive system for flood evacuation. This system gives the best
decisions to take, in this emergency situation, to minimize damages. It computes
the best evacuation routes in real time by executing an algorithm which takes into
consideration the spatial characteristics of hazard propagation. The system, based
on sensors network, is adapted to the changes of the environment and provides di-
rections for the shortest and less hazardous routes to the users.

1 Introduction
Natural disasters such as floods, earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, fires -in urban
cities- usually result in huge environmental damages and human casualties. During
these natural disasters, the emergency teams meet difficulties to design the rescue
operations especially in an uncertain area which is subject to continuous changes.
For example, let’s assume an ambulance that wants to evacuate a victim. As the
ambulance goes to rescue him, it reaches a flooded road which can’t be crossed and
the driver realizes that the flood blocked the evacuation path he has chosen. So, he
goes back and tries to find another evacuation path hoping it won’t be hazardous.
However, he wastes time seeking for a safe path while the hazard has been increased.
This has shown the necessity to develop intelligent supporting evacuation sys-
tems. Thus, our research focuses on floods inundation and tries to manage them
effectively taking into account the changes generated by the environment in order

Sefrioui Imane · Cherrat Loubna · Ezziyyani Mostafa · Essaaidi Mohammed

Laboratory of Information Systems and Telecommunications - Abdelmalek Essaadi
University, Morocco
e-mail: {sefrioui.imane,ezziyyani,essaaidi}@gmail.com,
cherrat81@yahoo.fr

G. Fortino et al. (Eds.): Intelligent Distributed Computing VI, SCI 446, pp. 205–210.
springerlink.com © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013
206 S. Imane et al.

to minimize the damages. So, how can we optimally plan the rescue operations in
this strict time constraint, dynamic changes of the environment and the variability
of factors affecting the decision making?
In this paper, we propose a simulation system that provides real-time decision
support during the strict time of emergency situations in flood disaster. This system
consists of collecting information, coordinating with multiple entities, allocating
available resources for rescuing the victims. Our solution makes uses of a multi-
agent systems and wireless sensors networks. Agents are used to represent various
types of actors. The wireless sensor network is used to monitor the spread of hazards
and the sensed data is used by the simulator. In addition, our system is based on
outdoor navigation. So, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are used to model
the concerned areas.

2 Related Work
There is a considerable research in emergency simulation using GIS multi-agent-
based models. AROUND project [1] (Autonomous Robots for Observation of Urban
Networks after Disasters) is a complete simulation system for response planning
in case of earthquake disasters in urban area. It is a model based on Hanoi’s GIS
data. It relies on a set of autonomous and communicating robots, with multiple
sensors. These robots are able to self-organize in order to collect data about the
damaged area. This set represents a Multi-Agents System (MAS). Each robot is
viewed as an agent, able to adapt itself to face evolutions of its environment, which
is unpredictable. This model is developed in GAMA platform [7] (Gis & Agent-
based Modelling Architecture) which is a simulation development environment for
building spatially explicit agent-based simulations (See Fig. 1a).

(a) AROUND-Rescue Model using (b) Robocup-Rescue Simulation.

GAMA platform.

Fig. 1 Simulation tools that implement the emergency response during earthquake disaster

There is another simulation tool that implements the emergency response during
disasters. It is Robocup Rescue Simulation [6]. It was designed to provide emer-
gency decision support and to simulate the rescue operations at the Hanshin-Awaji