Application of Static Uncapacitated Multi-commodity Flow Models to Dynamic Capacity-constrained Evacuation Path Networks

We propose a static uncapacitated multi-commodity flow model along with a time-based scheduling tool for solving evacuation scheduling problems with capacity constraints. The paper addresses the problem of modeling evacuation scheduling out of an affected area, there are a pre-defined set of exit points out of the target affected area and a set of source points for the evacuees. The proposed approach ignores the capacity constraints and finds routes; next it schedules the routes that have been determined to satisfy the node and arc capacity constraints. A recent efficient heuristic algorithm for evacuation planning is selected as a reference for comparison. The results came from the developed uncapacitated network model for route finding and capacitated scheduling algorithm for evacuation time show that the proposed approach is competitive with heuristic methods in terms of the resulting evacuation time and evacuation routes and schedules.