The numerous man-made disasters and natural catastrophes that menace major communities accentuate the need for proper planning for emergency evacuation. Transportation networks in cities evolve over long time spans in tandem with population growth and evolution of travel patterns. In emergencies, travel demand and travel patterns drastically change from the usual everyday volumes and patterns. Given that most US and Canadian cities are already congested and operating near capacity during peak periods, network performance can severely deteriorate if drastic changes in Origin-Destination (O-D) demand patterns occur during or after a disaster. Also, loss of capacity due to the disaster and associated incidents can further complicate the matter. Therefore, the primary goal when a disaster or hazardous event occurs is to coordinate, control, and possibly optimize the utilization of the existing transportation network capacity. Emergency operation management centres face multi-faceted challenges in anticipating evacuation flows and providing proactive actions to guide and coordinate the public towards safe shelters. Numerous studies have contributed to developing and testing strategies that have the potential to mitigate the consequences of emergency situations. They primarily investigate the effect of some proposed strategies that have the potential of improving the performance of the evacuation process with modelling and optimization techniques. However, most of these studies are inherently restricted to evacuating automobile traffic using a certain strategy without considering other modes of transportation. Moreover, little emphasis is given to studying the interaction between the various strategies that could be potentially synergized to expedite the evacuation process. Also, the absence of an accurate representation of the spatial and temporal distribution of the population and the failure to identify the available modes and populations that are captive to certain modes contribute to the absence of multimodal evacuation procedures. Incorporating multiple modes into emergency evacuation has the potential to expedite the evacuation process and is essential to assuring the effective evacuation of transit-captive and special-needs populations . This dissertation presents a novel multimodal optimization framework that combines vehicular traffic and mass transit for emergency evacuation. A multi-objective approach is used to optimize the multimodal evacuation problem. For automobile evacuees, an Optimal Spatio-Temporal Evacuation (OSTE) framework is presented for generating optimal demand scheduling, destination choices and route choices, simultaneously. OSTE implements Dynamic Traffic Assignment (DTA) techniques coupled with parallel distributed genetic optimization to guarantee a near global optimal solution. For transit evacuees, a Multi-Depots, Time Constrained, Pick-up and Delivery Vehicle Routing Problem (MDTCPD-VRP) framework is presented to model the use of public transit vehicles in evacuation situations. The MDTCPD-VRP implements constraint programming and local search techniques to optimize certain objective functions and satisfy a set of constraints. The OSTE and MDTCPD-VRP platforms are integrated into one framework to replicate the impact of congestion caused by traffic on transit vehicle travel times. A proof-of-concept prototype has been tested; it investigates the optimization of a multimodal evacuation of a portion of the Toronto Waterfront area. It also assesses the impact of multiple objective functions on emergency evacuation while attempting to achieve an equilibrium state between transit modes and vehicular traffic. Then, a large-scale application, including a demand estimation model from a regional travel survey, is conducted for the evacuation of the entire City of Toronto. This framework addresses many limitations of existing evacuation planning models by: 1) synergizing multiple evacuation strategies; 2) utilizing robust optimization and solution algorithms that can tackle such multi-dimensional non deterministic problem; 3) estimating the spatial and temporal distribution of evacuation demand; 4) identifying the transit-dependent population; 5) integrating multiple modes in emergency evacuation. The framework presents a significant step forward in emergency evacuation optimization.

Act no. 328/2001 of the Collection of Laws defines that, apart from others, evacuation must be planned for handling emergency situations that require an alarm of the third or spe-cial degree to be raised. Successful evacuation requires an evacuation plan be made as part of crisis preparedness plans and this project could become a template for preparing evacuation plans for emergency situations at Fakultní nemocnice (a teaching hospital) in Motol, Prague. The teaching hospital in Motol is one of the largest hospitals in central Europe. It has 2,500 beds at its disposal, 350 of which are with intensive care. The hospital has large prem-ises the heart of which consists of two monoblocks, one for children patients and the other for adult ones. The other buildings in the hospital house its technical and administrative facilities or some special departments. The set of persons in question includes all the people in danger on the premises at the time of raised evacuation. It means hospitalized patients, outpatient ones, employees, students and teachers of the 2. Lékařská fakulta UK (the Medical Faculty of Charles University) and visitors. The objective of this work is to create model templates for evacuation plans for se-lected wards as well as larger departments, including the entire hospital complex. The other objective is to verify, or refute, the hypothesis that evacuation, partial or complete, of a large hospital can be finished within 12 hours. The methodology was based on detailed data collection about each ward and bed de-partments (location, number of beds, number of staff at various time of the day etc). Another source of information was a detailed survey of the entire premises focused at finding potential evacuation routes inside as well as outside the buildings, capacity of corridors, stairways, lifts, and other important information related to evacuation. The results of the project are presented in the form of ten model evacuation plans for various individual parts as well as whole units of the hospital: 1. Evacuation of one ward of the children{\crq}s monoblock, 2. Evacuation of one wing of the children{\crq}s monoblock, 3. Entire evacuation of the children{\crq}s monoblock, 4. Evacuation of one ward of the adult{\crq}s monoblock, 5. Evacuation of one floor in one communication node of the adult{\crq}s monoblock, 6. Evacua-tion of one entire communication node of the adult{\crq}s monoblock, 7. Entire evacuation of the adult{\crq}s monoblock, 8. Evacuation of the other hospital facilities, 9. Evacuation of another pa-vilion, 10. Entire evacuation of the whole hospital. The final results show that it is not possible to have one universal evacuation plan that would include all potential situations but several plans for particular kinds of exposure and sizes of departments in danger. The hypothesis was verified for variants 1., 2., 3., 4., 5., 6., 8. and 9. but it was not verified for variants 7. and 10. Evacuation of the entire adult{\crq}s mon-oblock and evacuation of the whole hospital cannot be finished within 12 hours after alert.

Population evacuation plan is one of the plans of specific operations, which are covered within the region's emergency plan according to Decree No. 328/2001 Coll.Evacuation belongs among the basic methods of population protection, being a summary of principles and organisation measures to ensure moving the persons, animals and material assets from the area endangered by an extraordinary event to other area. In the case of an extraordinary event endangering larger territorial unit, not only the populated agglomerations and industrial facilities may be included in the area evacuation, but also the inpatient healthcare facilities, where the situation difficulty is amplified by the patients depending on care by medical personnel and provision of healthcare services. Presently, there is no clear legal standard imposing an obligation on organisations to elaborate a complete evacuation plan. This issue is covered only partially in the sphere of legislation concerning fire protection. Nevertheless within the region's emergency plan elaborated for solution of extraordinary events requiring declaration of the third level (in the case of endangering more than 100 and less than 1,000 persons) and special level of alarm (when more than 1,000, a part of a municipality or enterprise grounds are endangered), all organisations with more than 100 persons should have the evacuation plans prepared. In the case of inpatient healthcare facilities, elaboration of evacuation plans is absolutely inevitable. The theoretical part of the dissertation describes the general principles and methods of performing the population evacuation. Attention was paid also to professional coverage, evacuation authorities and organisations and their structure according to the scope of the taken measures. In the chapter called "Application of the evacuation plan to inpatient healthcare facilities", the general principles and procedures concerning evacuation were applied to the inpatient healthcare facilities. In the practical part of the dissertation, an analysis of preparedness of the inpatient healthcare facilities for possible area evacuation to all-nation extent was made and the hitherto experience of the personnel of the inpatient healthcare facilities with any type of evacuation and their preparedness for possible complete evacuation were examined. Such examinations were made by questionnaire surveys. The collected data have been processed by statistical methods. The evaluation of results is presented in the "Results" chapter. On the basis of the acquired knowledge, a proposal of evacuation plan was drafted for the inpatient healthcare facilities. At the end of the dissertation, the procedures are suggested that may help manage perfectly the potential complete evacuation. Expected utilisation of the dissertation results was directed to definition of the optimum procedures and measures leading to successful management of evacuation of an inpatient health care facility. The dissertation conclusions may be used not only as the document for creating evacuation plans for other health care facilities, but they may contribute to considerable extent to elaboration of uniform evacuation preparation methodology within the emergency preparedness of the healthcare services.

Aims: The Second World War had a dramatic impact on the lives of those who lived through it (Davies, 1997) and its long-term impact continues for older people whose formative life experiences were affected by the process of Britain‟s wartime child evacuation scheme (Foster et al., 2003). Despite the place in the national psyche that remembrance of the World Wars holds there is very little literature or psychological research investigating the long-term effects of evacuation. There have been some previous quantitative studies using questionnaires to explore the effects of evacuation (e.g. Rusby, 2008, Foster et al., 2003, Waugh et al., 2007). There has also been one qualitative study exploring evacuees' experience of evacuation (Sturgeon-Clegg, Dpsych unpublished thesis). However, with an increasing number of former evacuees now becoming eligible for older people's services and being seen by mental health practitioners in specialist older people's services, this study is the first to ask psychologists who have worked with former evacuees about their experience of the therapy and whether they consider there is a long-term impact of evacuation. Method: Six psychologists took part in one-to-one, face-to-face interviews to investigate their experiences of working with evacuated clients whether they thought there had been a long-term impact of the evacuation on former evacuees. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (Smith et al., 2009) methodology was used to analyse the data. Each interview was analysed individually before cross analysis. Results: The research produced three prominent themes related to the way psychologists understood the therapy with former evacuees. The first theme was the different voices around evacuation in the therapy room and how these different voices (the therapist's, the former evacuee's and dominate discourses) influenced participants' understanding of the evacuation experience. The second theme around "being genuine" explored psychologists' beliefs about their role and the role of therapy for former evacuees. The third theme was an awareness of death in the therapy with former evacuees and the impact this had on the therapeutic relationship. Implications: The main implications identified were: the need for psychologists working with former evacuees to have an understanding of evacuation and knowledge of the research on the long-term impact of evacuation on former evacuees. The importance of supporting psychologists working with former evacuees around the complex task of making sense of the relationship issues in the therapeutic relationship. Finally, participants in the study stressed the importance of developing a trusting, non-judging environment to encourage psychologists to process their response to the former evacuees they worked with.

The need to have evacuation plans in place for readily implementation for special need populations has become evident after catastrophic events such as Hurricane Katrina. For the purpose of this research special need populations will include, but are not limited to, people with physical disabilities, senior citizens, non-English speaking populations, residents and employees without vehicles, and tourists. The main objective of this research is to evaluate different evacuation procedures for special need populations from large urban areas utilizing current public transit systems. A microscopic simulation model was constructed to analyze real life scenarios for evacuation methodologies. A linear programming optimization model was developed to find the optimum locations for evacuation bus stops for the case study area. The results from this research were very interesting and can aid evacuation planners in the future. / by Linda S. Hess. / Thesis (M.S.C.S.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2009. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2009. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Emergencies that require immediate evacuation should be encountered with effective preparedness. With over 14 billion dollars in damages and 3,000 people killed each year, fire emergency preparedness is of critical importance. Fire drills aim to prepare and educate people on how to react properly, in order to avoid as many casualties possible. Fire drills can be expensive and time consuming to conduct, and in most cases lack the level of realism to properly educate the trainees. In this thesis, a virtual reality (VR) emergency evacuation training platform is presented. With VR, we aim to eliminate the real life constraints that exist, while succesfully training individuals. The application operator can spawn fires in any desired location, and at the same time the user being trained is getting informed about the safest and fastest path available, while being provided with constant feedback. We generate a grid graph on a given floor plan to run a pathfinding algorithm. We use Linear Temporal Logic (LTL) to formulate the existing constraints in our approach.

This study investigates the evacuation of 60,000 French and Belgian children to Switzerland between 1940 and 1945. This humanitarian action was initially implemented by a coalition of Swiss charities but because of its growing popularity and increasing scope, the Swiss Red Cross joined the efforts in 1942. Despite the devastation, food scarcities and logistical limitations of the Second World War, these children were successfully fed, clothed and housed in Swiss households for three-month periods before they returned home. Given the massive diplomatic and material challenges, it is surprising that such a large transnational evacuation for vulnerable, foreign children was generally effective. By evaluating both how these evacuations were conducted and why participating governments sought to support or prohibit their implementation, this thesis reveals new information that challenges the standard narratives of the wartime actions of the Allies, Nazi Germany and Switzerland. Britain and America’s role in the evacuation does not support their reputation as righteous victors, but as bickering governments strategizing to strengthen their post-war political position in Europe. Nazi Germany’s authorization of the evacuation deepens our knowledge by demonstrating how “humanitarian” operations were circuitously manipulated as a way to increase Nazi control. The noteworthy hospitality of Swiss citizens significantly diverged from the strict immigration policies imposed by their government, a finding which both challenges and reinforces the controversy surrounding Switzerland’s prohibitive, internationally-condemned refugee policies. Overall, this thesis recasts each participant in a new light by questioning the motivations of governments at war, the value of children in war, and the logistics of wartime humanitarian operations.

在建築物應急疏散過程中，人員個體的路徑選擇將影響人群整體的疏散情況。空間認知研究表明，人們通過認知獲取空間知識，並在認知地圖的指引下完成尋徑任務，尋徑過程因人而異。應急疏散時，建築物內部空間時有變化，心理壓力和人群活動等都將影響人員的路徑選擇。然而，現有疏散模型通常採用路徑搜索演算法來類比人員的逃生路徑。該方法多以最優路徑為目標，難以類比真實的尋徑過程，不能反映個體間的尋徑差異。因此，準確模擬人員個體的尋徑行為是建築物疏散模擬的研究重點。通過類比不同人群的疏散情況，採取針對性的疏散引導，可以有效緩解擁堵，提高疏散效率。 / 鑒於以上背景，本文以模擬多層建築中不同人群的疏散情況為目標，基於尋徑行為理論，考慮人群活動和室內空間變化的影響，分析建築物疏散時各類人員的尋徑行為，從而構建基於認知智慧體的疏散模型，類比多層建築的人員疏散。研究從以下方面展開： / （1）研究尋徑行為理論，分析建築物疏散時人員尋徑的知識需求和尋徑策略，考慮人群活動對個體尋徑的影響，構建建築物應急疏散時人員尋徑的過程模型。 / （2）研究建築物內部空間的表達方法，提出針對人群疏散類比的建築物空間表達模型。該模型在宏觀上採用基於語義的方法構建了的考慮消防設施的動態空間拓撲結構，在微觀上採用網格模型表達建築物內部幾何空間。 / （3）基於尋徑過程模型和建築物空間表達模型，構建基於認知智慧體的建築物疏散模型。智慧體行為模型以尋徑過程模型為理論基礎，包括知識表達，尋徑模型，環境認知模型和运動模型。 / （4）以某大學教學樓為例，驗證模型的可行性。考慮日常教學和籌辦會議等典型情況下的人群構成，模擬各個人群在不同火災場景下的疏散過程。通過對比出口使用率，分析不同人群的疏散差異。 / 研究結果表明，本文構建的建築應急物疏散模型能夠類比多層建築中各類人員的尋徑行為，反應不同人群的疏散差異，模擬結果更為合理，可以有效輔助人群疏散管理。 / In building evacuation, escape route choice of individual evacuees will potentially affect the overall evacuation performance. Studies in spatial cognition suggest that people find their ways based on spatial knowledge developed from environmental perception. Therefore, people with different level of spatial knowledge may vary tremendously in wayfinding performance. In the emergency situation, the building’s internal structure may change as some built-in facilities are activated. In the meantime, people’s psychic stress and crowd dynamics will significantly affect evacuees’ route selection. However, in most evacuation models, evacuees are simulated as particles that automatically follow the optimal escape route, and consequently without taking into account individual differences in wayfinding. Therefore, modelling individualized wayfinding is a critical issue in building evacuation simulation. It is expected that evacuation simulations regarding different types of evacuees would benefit the evacuation management targeted at a particular group of people. / Given the aforementioned background, the goal of this research is to model evacuees’ route choice in a plausible way by taking into account the cognitive process of human wayfinding and hereby perform evacuation simulations of different groups of evacuees in a multi-level building. In order to reach this goal, the following studies have been conducted: / (1) Based on literature studies on human wayfinding, a process model of wayfinding has been established. With regard to the emergency situation of building evacuation, typical wayfinding tasks, knowledge requirement, individual wayfinding strategies and influence of surrounding crowds are elaborated and incorporated into the process model. / (2) A novel approach to represent the dynamic spatial environments is developed to facilitate the evacuation simulation of multi-level buildings. At the macro level, a semantics-based model is established to represent the topological structure of building interiors which can be timely updated according to the status of fire safety facilities during emergency evacuation. At the micro level, a grid graph-based model is adopted to represent the geometry of building layout in order to facilitate the simulation of two-dimensional human movement. / (3) On the basis of the process model of wayfinding and the representation of dynamic spatial environment of building interiors, a computational model is developed using cognizing agent for building evacuation simulation. The architecture of the cognizing agent consists of knowledge representation, wayfinding model, environmental perception model and local movement model. / (4) The proposed model is verified and applied for the evacuation simulation of a university building. A series of evacuation simulations have been conducted in different fire scenarios with respect to the particular groups of evacuees in school days and conference days. Based on statistical analyses of exit utilization, evacuation performance of different groups of evacuees has been discussed and compared. / It has been proven that the proposed evacuation model, which incorporates the cognitive perspectives of human wayfinding, is capable of simulating a variety of route choice of different types of evacuees during the evacuation of a multi-level building. The model can be used to simulate the evacuation of different groups of evacuees, and thus provide more realistic basis for building evacuation management. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Detailed summary in vernacular field only. / Tan, Lu. / Thesis (Ph.D.) Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2014. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 137-148). / Abstracts also in Chinese.

The purpose of this research is to investigate the relationships between the movement time, travel speed and occupant density during trial evacuations, particularly for theatre-type rooms. The study mainly focuses on crowd movement behaviour within a restricted space and covers aspects of human behaviour and issues needed to be considered in terms of the characteristics of lecture theatres. A set of experiments were carried out in three building blocks at the University of Canterbury in order to obtain the actual data for analysis. The number of students evacuating from each exit and the evacuation time were recorded, and their movement behaviour was monitored by video camera. Based on the experimental data, a numerical analysis was undertaken to formulate an equation for the prediction of evacuation time applying to lecture theatres. The developed equation was compared with other available relationships from the literature. An evacuation model under development, named EvacuatioNZ, was applied to simulate the experiments and the results were compared with the experimental data. The comparison showed that the developed equation showed a better performance in predicting evacuation time of lecture theatres than other available methods however, had some limitations. The EvauctioNZ model was able to be improved by using an alternative geometry input but was still not as accurate as the developed method. A recommended modification of the model was presented for improvement.

From June 1940 until May 1945, Guernsey children either lived under German occupation or were evacuated to England for the duration of the war. This thesis presents a small case study that uses oral testimony and resilience theory to describe Guernsey children’s experiences during World War Two. Its intent is to contribute towards the larger picture of British children’s experiences during this period. This thesis also aims to understand how the majority of those who were children on Guernsey during this time judged that, despite the obvious challenges related to wartime, their experiences had a net positive effect on their lives. Findings suggest that, consistent with resilience theory, children found the support they needed both internally using optimism, empathy, comparison, and the attitude of ‘getting on with it’ and externally from family, teachers, and the local people with whom they lived during evacuation or occupation. / Graduate