Evacuation plan of an industrial zone: Case study of a chemical accident in Aliaga, Turkey and the comparison of two different simulation softwares

• Microscopic and mesoscopic approaches are adopted for an evacuation simulation.
• The simulation has been performed by Cube Avenue and MATSim softwares.
• Results of two simulation softwares are compared.

Chemical accidents cause great danger for people working in the chemical facilities and residents living close to these facilities where in general evacuation is required in case of an accident. The most efficient way to create evacuation plans is to simulate the transportation network. In this paper, evacuation simulations are carried out for Aliaga, the industrial zone of Izmir, Turkey where petro-chemical companies such as Petkim and Tupras are active. The scenario is based on an explosion in the acrylonitrile (ACN) factory in Petkim. The risk zone is determined considering the features of ACN, the wind speed and the direction of the wind. Total number of evacuees is found 14,472, almost 26% of the population of Aliaga. The second part of this study deals with the simulations executed via mesoscopic simulation software called Cube Avenue and microscopic simulation software called MATSim. The aim of using two simulation softwares is to be able to compare evacuation time estimates and to obtain reliable results from evacuation simulations which are crucial and critical in creating emergency plans. In the final part, a comparison of the two simulation results is presented.