Simulating crowd evacuation with socio-cultural, cognitive, and emotional elements

In this research, the effects of culture, cognitions, and emotions on crisis management and prevention are analysed. An agent-based crowd evacuation simulation model was created, named IMPACT, to study the evacuation process from a transport hub. To extend previous research, various socio-cultural, cognitive, and emotional factors were modelled, including: language, gender, familiarity with the environment, emotional contagion, prosocial behaviour, falls, group decision making, and compliance. The IMPACT model was validated against data from an evacuation drill using the existing EXODUS evacuation model. Results show that on all measures, the IMPACT model is within or close to the prescribed boundaries, thereby establishing its validity. Structured simulations with the validated model revealed important findings, including: the effect of doors as bottlenecks, social contagion speeding up evacuation time, falling behaviour not affecting evacuation time significantly, and travelling in groups being more beneficial for evacuation time than travelling alone. This research has important practical applications for crowd management professionals, including transport hub operators, first responders, and risk assessors

Intelligent support model for flood victims

Stress is a common psychological stimulus that occurs in a person caused by stressors.Natural disaster is a specific form of stressor that can carry wide area of implications in the population. It is the most common factors which contribute to high level of stress and other psychological problems of individuals.Therefore, intervention must be introduced to help victims who have stress during natural disasters.In order to provide an effective intervention for victims in an evacuation center, a supporting software agent could be helpful. Focusing on providing support to flood victims, this paper presents a development of an intelligent support model of victims' stress in flood disaster based on the existing computational model.The research methodology deploys four phases; identification of properties, formalization, simulation, and performance evaluation.The computational support model is tested by using simulation in two different conditions; person without therapy and person following the therapy intervention.Results suggest that the resilience level is high due to person’s capability of enhancing one’s problem focus coping skills rather than relying on emotional focus coping skills

Panic That Spreads Sociobehavioral Contagion in Pedestrian Evacuations

Crowds are a part of everyday public life, from stadiums and arenas to school hallways. Occasionally, pushing within the crowd spontaneously escalates to crushing behavior, resulting in injuries and even death. The rarity and unpredictability of these incidents provides few options to collect data for research on the prediction and prevention of hazardous emergent behaviors in crowds. This study takes a close look at the way states of agitation, such as panic, can spread through crowds. Group composition—mainly family groups composed of members with differing mobility levels—plays an important role in the spread of agitation through the crowd, ultimately affecting the exit density and evacuation clearance time of a simulated venue. This study used an agent-based model of pedestrian movement during the egress of a hypothetical room and adopted an emotional, cognitive, and social framework to explore the transference and dissipation of agitation through a crowd. The preliminary results reveal that average group size in a crowd is a primary contributor to the exit density and evacuation clearance time. The study provides the groundwork on which to build more elaborate models that incorporate sociobehavioral aspects to simulate human movement during panic situations and account for the potential for dangerous behavior to emerge in crowds

A data-driven approach towards a realistic and generic crowd simulation framework

Jacob Sinclair studied and developed a data-driven approach towards a realistic and generic crowd simulation framework. He found that by using virtual reality and questionnaires, we can gather all types of real world data. He also found that an AI framework developed using all types of data can produce similar results to the real world. This AI framework has the potential to be used to improve areas such as emergency management and response, traffic control, building design, video games, etc

Ergonomists as designers: computational modelling and simulation of complex socio-technical systems

Contemporary ergonomics problems are increasing in scale, ambition, and complexity. Understanding and creating solutions for these multi-faceted, dynamic, and systemic problems challenges traditional methods. Computational modelling approaches can help address this methodological shortfall. We illustrate this potential by describing applications of computational modelling to: (1) teamworking within a multi-team engineering environment; (2) crowd behaviour in different transport terminals; and (3) performance of engineering supply chains. Our examples highlight the benefits and challenges for multi-disciplinary approaches to computational modelling, demonstrating the need for socio-technical design principles. Our experience highlights opportunities for ergonomists as designers and users of computational models, and the instrumental role that ergonomics can play in developing and enhancing complex socio-technical systems. Recognising the challenges inherent in designing computational models, we reflect on practical issues and lessons learned so that computational modelling and simulation can become a standard and valuable technique in the ergonomists’ toolkit

Modelling without queues: adapting discrete-event simulation for service operations

Discrete-event simulation (DES), which has largely grown out of modelling manufacturing systems, has increasingly been applied in the service sector. The approach, however, is not always appropriate for modelling service operations. In particular, it cannot help with detailed decisions about the layout of service operations in which the customers are present such as retail outlets and airports. An adapted DES approach is proposed for modelling such systems and the approach is demonstrated through a model of a coffee shop. A key innovation is that queues are not explicitly modelled. The benefit of the approach is that it simplifies the modelling of service systems in which the customers are present by reducing the number of components that need to be modelled. It can also aid decisions about the layout of a system. We ask whether the approach is in fact an agent-based simulation and identify ways in which the approach could be extended

Integrating Personality And Emotion For Human Crowd Simulation

Existing research attempts to create realistic crowd simulations by incorporating personality and emotion into intelligent agents. However, personality and emotion were considered separately in existing studies, where the interactions of them are ignored. The main objective of this paper is to propose and implement a framework for crowd simulation with integration of the impacts and interactions of personality and emotion. An interactive solution based on the proposed framework is also developed for visualizing the crowd navigation behavior and collecting the related trajectory data. Three simulated scenarios: pass through, narrow passage, and emergence situation are used to validate the framework and compare the results with recent studies

Temporal dynamics modelling for aggression level of victims in disaster evacuation center

Natural disaster such as flood, earthquake, and typhoon poses a serious threat for humanity. However, post disaster is the hardest part to deal with. Assisting survivors who are looking for help always poses big challenges for volunteers to handle, especially when the number of victims is high.In this stage, emotional state of the victims is often unstable; and therefore, controlling them becomes a difficult task. This paper explained the idea of modelling individuals’ aggression levels in evacuation centers for floods (or any other natural disasters) victims. It described the development of a formal model that can be used as a base for building an intelligent agent or other types of software that can be helpful in training volunteers to handle victim’s aggressive.This will enhance the effectiveness of the volunteer work, thus improving the environment in the evacuation centers