Drexel University, Dept of Computer Science, Philadelphia, PA

Demonstration:Disaster Evacuation Support

Christopher J. Carpenter, Christopher J. Dugan, Evan A. Sultanik, Joseph B.

Kopena, Robert N. Lass, Duc N. Nguyen

William C. Regli, Pragnesh Jay Modi

Drexel University, Dept of Computer Science, Philadelphia, PA

Disaster Response

• A major task in disaster relief is evacuating the emergency site

FE

MA

pho

to

• Emergency personnelneed to determine and coordinate evac routes and reception centers

Drexel University, Dept of Computer Science, Philadelphia, PA

Problem Definition

• Goal: Support first responders and disaster relief workers in planning and managing evacuations– Aiming to be applicable at neighborhood, city,

and regional levels

• Approach: Model the task as a distributed constraint optimization problem (DCOP) running on mobile, wireless systems– Reporting state & assigning evacuation relief

centers based on available capacity

Drexel University, Dept of Computer Science, Philadelphia, PA

Adopt Agent Approach

• Agents represent convoy or group leaders choosing evacuation destinations– For this demonstration, each agent is running on a

TabletPC connected over a wireless ad-hoc network

• Adopt is used as the basic DCOP technique– Provides optimal, distributed constraint solving

• Decentralization reduces infrastructure, fragility– No servers or Internet; peers solving common problem– Potential tolerance to node failure, limited networking

Drexel University, Dept of Computer Science, Philadelphia, PA

Evacuation DCOP

Groups have various sizes and evacuation needs.

Constraints are the capacities of the shelters and the services provided.

Drexel University, Dept of Computer Science, Philadelphia, PA

Destinations Assigned

Using the Adopt algorithm, each agent coordinates in a decentralized, asynchronous fashion to optimally distribute evacuees.

Drexel University, Dept of Computer Science, Philadelphia, PA

AAAI 2007 Demo

• This work demonstrates:– The application of DCOP modeling and Adopt

to emergency management– Research extending Adopt to incorporate

network awareness and dynamic worlds

• Exhibit requirements:– Space & power for ~6 tablet/laptop computers

and an external screen or projector (all of which will be brought by the demo team)