Evacuation Planning using Answer Set Programming: An initial approach

This paper describes a methodology based on Answer Set Programming (ASP) to work with incomplete geographic data. Source geographic data which describes a risk zone is translated to ASP description and it allows to solve query's which can not be solved by a normal GIS. An evacuation plan can change when new situations are presented, for instance traffic, a zone in extreme danger or other natural modification of the zone to be evacuated. Since 1994, Risk Management Office in Mexico has declared around 30 km from the Popocatepetl Volcano crater a danger zone. This office defined several roads to evacuate the people when a Volcano event can be presented. Our approach allows to simulate and to give support to generate new evacuation plans. The results developed by the ASP approach can be translated to a visual format and can be incorporated to a GIS to develop other kind of analysis by using the geographic data.