Integrated Scheduling of Metro Fire Engines and Trains for Metro Fire Rescue

The fire outbreak in the metro poses severe risks to life and property due to the closed and narrow metro tunnels and stations underground and high passenger density. Conventional fire engines are unsuitable for metro tracks in tunnels to extinguish the fire due to their rubber wheels. Metro fire engines (MFEs) are specialized for metro fire rescue. Metro fire rescue needs to quickly evacuate the trapped trains and allow MFE to quickly reach the fire by rescheduling the train and scheduling MFE, ensuring a rapid response to the metro fire and passenger safety. To this end, we propose trapped train evacuation and MFE overtaking strategies, develop a mixed integer programming model for joint scheduling of the MFE and trains. The applicability and performance of the model are verified through a numerical example from Suzhou Metro Line 1. We derive some important insights for metro fire rescue regarding the train departure interval and rescue strategy.