Effective evacuations can save lives. This book provides mathematical models of pedestrian movements that can be used specifically for designing feedback control laws for effective evacuation. The book also provides various feedback control laws to accomplish the effective evacuation. It book uses the hydrodynamic hyperbolic PDE macroscopic pedestrian models since they are amenable to feedback control design. The control designs are obtained through different nonlinear techniques.

Effective evacuations can save lives. This book provides mathematical models of pedestrian movements that can be used specifically for designing feedback control laws for effective evacuation. The book also provides various feedback control laws to accomplish the effective evacuation. It book uses the hydrodynamic hyperbolic PDE macroscopic pedestrian models since they are amenable to feedback control design. The control designs are obtained through different nonlinear techniques.

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.