Abstract
The development and implementation of a methodology by which evacuation planners can assess the sufficiency of their current evacuation plan, identify inadequacies, and define and evaluate potential improvement strategies are discussed. Such goals are accomplished through innovative uses of information technology and the development of a modeling environment that builds on previous work by introducing more representative and efficient algorithms. The new evacuation planning methodology is subsequently applied to a fixed facility incident scenario to demonstrate its applicability to present practice. In this context, several important conclusions are reached, illustrating the importance of having this type of decision-support tool available. Advancements made to the state of the art are assessed and further research needs in this critical and emerging field are identified.
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