An organized evacuation of pedestrians entrapped in a building, in
emergencies such as those caused by fire, bomb blast, intentional or
unintentional release of toxins in buildings etc., is of utmost
importance. The focus of this book is on the development of a formal
control methodology for an orderly and jam-free evacuation of
pedestrians entrapped in a network of corridors in buildings in such
emergency situations. To develop an effective solution, the pedestrian
evacuation from a network of corridors is divided into two basic
problems of flow routing and flow control. In this study the solutions
of these two basic problems are developed. Concepts are applied from the
disciplines of control engineering, operations research and
transportation engineering to come up with novel ideas which model the
critical aspects of the emergency evacuation scenario. While capturing
the emergency egress situation appropriately these ideas are purposely
kept simple enough to provide insights for practical applications.