This title appears in the Scientific Report :
2019
Please use the identifier:
http://hdl.handle.net/2128/23968 in citations.
Capacity of train stations in case of a large-scale emergency evacuation
Capacity of train stations in case of a large-scale emergency evacuation
Nature and human made hazards like hurricanes, inundations, wildfires, terroristic attacks or incidents in nuclear power plants make it necessary to evacuate large urban areas in a very short time. So far, the consideration of railway transportation is very rarely part of the evacuation strategies....
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Personal Name(s): | Braun, Anna (Corresponding author) |
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Chraibi, Mohcine / Arnold, Lukas | |
Contributing Institute: |
Zivile Sicherheitsforschung; IAS-7 |
Imprint: |
2019
|
Conference: | Nordic Fire & Safety Days, Copenhagen (Denmark), 2019-08-20 - 2019-08-21 |
Document Type: |
Conference Presentation |
Research Program: |
Doktorand ohne besondere Förderung Computational Science and Mathematical Methods |
Link: |
OpenAccess OpenAccess |
Publikationsportal JuSER |
Nature and human made hazards like hurricanes, inundations, wildfires, terroristic attacks or incidents in nuclear power plants make it necessary to evacuate large urban areas in a very short time. So far, the consideration of railway transportation is very rarely part of the evacuation strategies. One of the reasons is the unknown capacity of this infrastructure.In case of hurricanes Katrina and Rita e.g. the evacuation was accomplished with private vehicles and busses. In Germany, especially in the conurbation of Nordrhein-Westfalen, where many roads are overloaded during the daily rush hours, it is not possible to use only road dependent vehicles like private cars or busses to evacuate a large number of people into save areas. After the nuclear power plant disaster of Fukushima, the working group “AG Fukushima” was found, which recommends the use of trains for large-scale emergency evacuations. However, it is not clear if the capacity of the train stations is enough to handle these big evacuations in time.Hence, this work deals with the question how the capacity of train stations can be quantified and optimized for this application. Because it is, for logistical, time and financial reasons, not possible to close a central station and evacuate an entire city to practice a large-scale evacuation in an emergency exercise, the studies to estimate the capacity of a train station are carried out with the help of the Jülich Pedestrian Simulator (JuPedSim), a software tool for pedestrian dynamics.It has to be mentioned that the aim of the studies described here is to make a statement about the capacity of a train station and its dynamics, but not to give advances for the evacuation process of an entire city. Therefore, a model of a train station is built in JuPedSim and several parameters like the inflow and the outflow of the pedestrians, which are defined by different sources and the available trains, as well as the influence of luggage and group togetherness on the flow dynamics are examined to find the best routing strategy and organizational actions inside the train station. The special focus of this contribution lies therefore on the identification of critical bottlenecks. An estimation of which parameters are influencing congestion at these bottlenecks is presented. In addition, the organizational strategies are outlined, which can prevent congestion and increase the capacity of the train station. |