The probability of safe escape is a critical aspect of building safety. To safely escape, evacuees need to select an appropriate route and evacuate from hazardous buildings as fast as possible to reduce the risk of exposure to potential hazards. Therefore, route selection is very important for evacuees during an indoor emergency evacuation. However, selecting appropriate routes can be challenging when the building layout is complex. There is an urgent need for effective approaches to find the optimal evacuation route for indoor emergency response. Though many methods have been proposed in the literature, existing methods focus mainly on finding the route with the shortest distance. However, the route with the shortest distance does not always lead to the shortest evacuation time, as many building conditions, such as doors and stairs, may increase the complexity of the route. It is necessary to consider both the distance and complexity of the route when selecting an evacuation route. To improve the process of evacuation route selection, this study proposes a routing algorithm that balances the route distance and complexity. In the proposed algorithm, (1) critical building conditions that influence route complexity are identified, (2) a quantitative method for measuring the complexity of the identified building conditions is developed, (3) a routing optimization model for balancing route distance and complexity is proposed, and, (4) a case building is utilized to validate the proposed algorithm. The proposed method can help emergency managers develop effective emergency evacuation plans. It can also be used to help building occupants select the safest evacuation route.
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