An agent-based approach to simulating evacuation in elderly care facilities with disabled older adults

Emergencies in elderly care facilities are not uncommon. However, conducting evacuation drills for disabled older adults poses significant challenges due to their physical limitations. While simulation approaches offer a viable alternative, there is a dearth of research focused on evacuation simulation models considering the presence of disabled older adults. This study introduces an agent-based approach designed to simulate the evacuation of older adults within elderly care facilities. The approach incorporates the distinct characteristics and behaviors of nursing staff, self-sufficient, semi-disabled, and disabled older adults during evacuation. The simulation environment replicates the typical architectural layout of single-story elderly care facilities. Two evacuation strategies, specifying the order in which nursing staff assist disabled older adults during evacuation, are proposed. The performance of these strategies under scenarios with varying proportions of disabled older adults and caregiver ratios is compared through simulation experiments. The results indicate that the strategy requiring nursing staff to initially assist the disabled older adults under their responsibility and then seek out and aid the nearest disabled older adults is more effective in reducing total evacuation time in most cases. Furthermore, the impact of the spatial layout of disabled rooms on evacuation efficiency and safety is discussed. The results reveal that the opposite-side center concentration pattern of disabled rooms outperforms other spatial layout patterns of disabled rooms in terms of evacuation efficiency and safety. These findings contribute to the optimization of evacuation strategies and spatial layouts within elderly care facilities by providing quantitative evidence to support decision-makers.