Abstract: With rapid urbanization and frequent earthquake disasters,the pre-disaster study of emergency evacuation has become a substantial topic of disaster prevention and mitigation in urban area.Most of the previous studies emphasized large-scale evacuation involving one or more urban areas,while the research that is specific to basic level district,such as a community,is obviously inadequate in terms of evacuation accuracy,efficiency and strategies.In this paper,based on the current layout of emergency evacuation facilities and nighttime evacuation demands in urban community,we used GIS spatial analysis technology to develop a systematical methodology for community evacuation against earthquake.The methodology emphasized the following aspects: the distribution analysis of emergency evacuation demands,the calculation of shelters’space accessibility,and the optimization of evacuation destinations.Meanwhile,we applied the methodology to Lujiazui Street of Pudong New District,Shanghai in China.Consequently,the study showed that the proposed methodology could be used to formulate the pre-event planning for earthquake disasters’prevention and mitigation on community scale,especially for organizing a rapid and smooth evacuation,and optimizing the location allocation of shelters.