An Optimisation Model for Designing Social Distancing Enhanced Physical Spaces

Abstract

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, social distancing has become an essential element of our daily lives. As a result, the development of technological solutions for the design and re-design of physical spaces with the necessary physical distancing measures is an important problem that must be addressed. In this paper, we show how automatic design optimisation can be used to simulate the layout of physical spaces subject to a given social distancing requirement. We use a well known mathematical technique based on the circle packing to address this challenge. Thus, given the dimensions and the necessary constraints on the physical space, we formulate the design as a solution to a constrained nonlinear optimisation problem. We then solve the optimisation problem to arrive at a number of feasible design solutions from which the user can pick the most desirable option. By way of examples, in this paper, we show how the proposed model can be practically applied.