Multi-ant colony system for evacuation routing problem with mixed traffic flow

Evacuation routing problem with mixed traffic flow is complex due to the interaction among different types of evacuees. The positive feedback mechanism of single ant colony system may lead to congestion on some optimum routes. Like different ant colony systems in nature, different components of traffic flow compete and interact with each other during evacuation process. In this paper, an approach based on multi-ant colony system was proposed to tackle evacuation routing problem with mixed traffic flow. Total evacuation time is minimized and traffic load of the whole road network is balanced by this approach. The experimental results show that this approach based on multi-ant colony system can obtain better solutions than single ant colony system and solve mixed traffic flow evacuation problem with reasonable routing plans.