During mass evacuations, many psychological and physical factors are responsible
for stampedes and other life threatening situations. Quantitative and qualitative
analyses of these factors are of high importance while devising optimal strategies
for evacuations. In this work we present an agent-based model that considers
psychological and physical factors that cause panic in such situations. We have
also simulated some simple evacuation scenarios and presented a method to identify
possible bottlenecks and shortcomings in the environments during emergency
evacuations. Our method also helps in evaluation and analysis of different
evacuation strategies. To enable this analysis we have used a rule-based roadmap
approach, where critical nodes in the environment are identified by the evacuation
planner and each node has a special rule according to the strategy of the planner.
We evaluate different strategies on parameters such as evacuation time and
physical discomfort caused to the agents.