Research on Optimization Algorithm for Fire Emergency Evacuation in Experimental Buildings of Universities

College laboratory buildings have dense population, numerous electrical devices, and high fire risk. However, the existing evacuation A* algorithm has the disadvantages of long time and poor adaptability. In order to effectively solve the problems of long evacuation simulation time, low efficiency, and inability to change evacuation directions according to fire conditions in college laboratory buildings, this paper proposes an improved A* algorithm. This paper improves the heuristic function in the A* algorithm by introducing a logarithmic decay factor. By changing the weight of the estimated cost, it reduces the number of unnecessary search nodes and steers the search algorithm in the correct direction, thereby improving search efficiency. Secondly, it introduces a bidirectional A* search strategy to reduce search nodes and improve the efficiency of the algorithm. Simulation results show that the improved A* algorithm has fewer traversed nodes, shorter search paths, and higher search efficiency, which verifies the effectiveness and feasibility of the improved A* algorithm in experimental building fire evacuation. This study provides a solution for fire evacuation in college laboratory buildings.