A novel method for planning a staged evacuation

This paper presents an innovative method to facilitate making such a plan. Using an algorithm to schedule the starting time of each evacuation group, the method guarantees that the time of completing a large-scale evacuation is very close to its theoretically shortest evacuation time. Meanwhile, unlike a simultaneous evacuation, during a staged evacuation planned with the proposed method, all evacuees can take the shortest path to a safe exit. Once evacuees start off, they will not suffer any traffic congestion. The above advantages of this innovative method are achieved by using an algorithm with three nested loops. Experiments have been conducted, and their results have validated the proposed method.