Fluid-Based Analysis of Pedestrian Crowd at Bottlenecks

In emergency egress crowd behavior critically affects egress efficiency and public safety. By integrating psychological principles to Newtonian motion of crowd, a fluid-based equation is derived in this paper to explore how energy in different forms is balanced when pedestrian crowd pass through a bottleneck. Such fluid-based analysis helps to bridge a gap among psychological findings, pedestrian models and simulation results, and it further provides a new perspective to understand how the faster-is-slower effect is caused and how disastrous events (e.g., jamming) occur at a bottleneck passage.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure

Simulation of Crowd Egress with Environmental Stressors

This article presents a modeling framework to characterize evacuees' response to environmental stimuli during emergency egress, especially in fire and smoke condition. The model is developed in consistency with stress theory, which explains how an organism reacts to environmental stressors. We integrate the theory into the well-known social-force model and apply the method to simulate crowd evacuation behavior in building emergency egress. The algorithm has been tested in FDS+EVAC.Comment: 10 pages, 10 figure

Understanding Social-Force Model in Psychological Principles of Collective Behavior

To well understand crowd behavior, microscopic models have been developed in recent decades, in which an individual's behavioral/psychological status can be modeled and simulated. A well-known model is the social-force model innovated by physical scientists (Helbing and Molnar, 1995; Helbing, Farkas and Vicsek, 2000; Helbing et al., 2002). This model has been widely accepted and mainly used in simulation of crowd evacuation in the past decade. A problem, however, is that the testing results of the model were not explained in consistency with the psychological findings, resulting in misunderstanding of the model by psychologists. This paper will bridge the gap between psychological studies and physical explanation about this model. We reinterpret this physics-based model from a psychological perspective, clarifying that the model is consistent with psychological theories on stress, including time-related stress and interpersonal stress. Based on the conception of stress, we renew the model at both micro-and-macro level, referring to multi-agent simulation in a microscopic sense and fluid-based analysis in a macroscopic sense. The cognition and behavior of individual agents are critically modeled as response to environmental stimuli. Existing simulation results such as faster-is-slower effect will be reinterpreted by Yerkes-Dodson law, and herding and grouping effect are further discussed by integrating attraction into the social force. In brief the social-force model exhibits a bridge between the physics laws and psychological principles regarding crowd motion, and this paper will renew and reinterpret the model on the foundation of psychological studies.Comment: 22 pages, 12 figur

Činioci uticaja na donošenje odluka o sprovođenju evakuacije u uslovima katastrofa izazvanih požarima u stambenim objektima - studija slučaja beograda

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Činioci uticaja na donošenje odluka o sprovođenju evakuacije u uslovima katastrofa izazvanih požarima u stambenim objektima - studija slučaja beograda

U teoriji o katastrofama postoje nekonzistentni rezultati istraživanja u pogledu načina uticaja određenih činilaca na blagovremeno i adekvatno donošenje odluka o sprovođenju evakuacija u uslovima katastrofa izazvanih požarima u stambenim objektima. Predmet istraživanja predstavlja ispitivanje stavova građana u pogledu pristanka na evakuaciju, načinu i barijerama njenog sprovođenja, ali i uticaju internih (demografskih, socioekonomskih i psiholoških) činilaca na sprovođenje evakuacije u katastrofama izazvanim požarima na teritoriji Republike Srbije. Rezultati istraživanja pokazuju da bi se najveći broj građana evakuisao prilikom izbijanja požara u stambenim objektima. Pored toga, utvrđen je statistički značajan uticaj određenih demografskih i socio-ekonomskih činilaca na donošenje takvih odluka. U odnosu na građane koji bi odbili da se evakuišu, potrebno je sprovesti naknadna istraživanja kako bi se utvrdilo zašto oni odbijaju da se evakuišu i kojim se razlozima najviše rukovode

CellEVAC: an adaptive guidance system for crowd evacuation through behavioral optimization

A critical aspect of crowds' evacuation processes is the dynamism of individual decision making. Identifying optimal strategies at an individual level may improve both evacuation time and safety, which is essential for developing efficient evacuation systems. Here, we investigate how to favor a coordinated group dynamic through optimal exit-choice instructions using behavioral strategy optimization. We propose and evaluate an adaptive guidance system (Cell-based Crowd Evacuation, CellEVAC) that dynamically allocates colors to cells in a cellbased pedestrian positioning infrastructure, to provide efficient exit-choice indications. The operational module of CellEVAC implements an optimized discrete-choice model that integrates the influential factors that would make evacuees adapt their exit choice. To optimize the model, we used a simulation?optimization modeling framework that integrates microscopic pedestrian simulation based on the classical Social Force Model. In the majority of studies, the objective has been to optimize evacuation time. In contrast, we paid particular attention to safety by using Pedestrian Fundamental Diagrams that model the dynamics of the exit gates. CellEVAC has been tested in a simulated real scenario (Madrid Arena) under different external pedestrian flow patterns that simulate complex pedestrian interactions. Results showed that CellEVAC outperforms evacuation processes in which the system is not used, with an exponential improvement as interactions become complex. We compared our system with an existing approach based on Cartesian Genetic Programming. Our system exhibited a better overall performance in terms of safety, evacuation time, and the number of revisions of exit-choice decisions. Further analyses also revealed that Cartesian Genetic Programming generates less natural pedestrian reactions and movements than CellEVAC. The fact that the decision logic module is built upon a behavioral model seems to favor a more natural and effective response. We also found that our proposal has a positive influence on evacuations even for a low compliance rate (40%).Ministerio de Economía y Competitivida

A Spatial Decision Support System for Oil Spill Response and Recovery

abstract: Coastal areas are susceptible to man-made disasters, such as oil spills, which not only have a dreadful impact on the lives of coastal communities and businesses but also have lasting and hazardous consequences. The United States coastal areas, especially the Gulf of Mexico, have witnessed devastating oil spills of varied sizes and durations that resulted in major economic and ecological losses. These disasters affected the oil, housing, forestry, tourism, and fishing industries with overall costs exceeding billions of dollars (Baade et al. (2007); Smith et al. (2011)). Extensive research has been done with respect to oil spill simulation techniques, spatial optimization models, and innovative strategies to deal with spill response and planning efforts. However, most of the research done in those areas is done independently of each other, leaving a conceptual void between them. In the following work, this thesis presents a Spatial Decision Support System (SDSS), which efficiently integrates the independent facets of spill modeling techniques and spatial optimization to enable officials to investigate and explore the various options to clean up an offshore oil spill to make a more informed decision. This thesis utilizes Blowout and Spill Occurrence Model (BLOSOM) developed by Sim et al. (2015) to simulate hypothetical oil spill scenarios, followed by the Oil Spill Cleanup and Operational Model (OSCOM) developed by Grubesic et al. (2017) to spatially optimize the response efforts. The results of this combination are visualized in the SDSS, featuring geographical maps, so the boat ramps from which the response should be launched can be easily identified along with the amount of oil that hits the shore thereby visualizing the intensity of the impact of the spill in the coastal areas for various cleanup targets.Dissertation/ThesisMasters Thesis Computer Science 201

Role of opinion sharing on the emergency evacuation dynamics

Emergency evacuation is a critical research topic and any improvement to the existing evacuation models will help in improving the safety of the evacuees. Currently, there are evacuation models that have either an accurate movement model or a sophisticated decision model. Individuals in a crowd tend to share and propagate their opinion. This opinion sharing part is either implicitly modeled or entirely overlooked in most of the existing models. Thus, one of the overarching goal of this research is to the study the effect of opinion evolution through an evacuating crowd. First, the opinion evolution in a crowd was modeled mathematically. Next, the results from the analytical model were validated with a simulation model having a simple motion model. To improve the fidelity of the evacuation model, a more realistic movement and decision model were incorporated and the effect of opinion sharing on the evacuation dynamics was studied extensively. Further, individuals with strong inclination towards particular route were introduced and their effect on overall efficiency was studied. Current evacuation guidance algorithms focuses on efficient crowd evacuation. The method of guidance delivery is generally overlooked. This important gap in guidance delivery is addressed next. Additionally, a virtual reality based immersive experiment is designed to study factors affecting individuals\u27 decision making during emergency evacuation

Human movement and behaviour simulation using gaming software

The provision of urban transportation systems that are inclusive and allow full participation in society for older people and people with disabilities is an important aspect of urban sustainability. This includes improving the design of transportation interchanges where divers individual humans interact in a crowded area. Simulation is an example of a beneficial method that can be widely applied to visualise and understand the problems using virtual environments. This research focuses on the development of simulation tools to simulate human movement and behaviour in crowded areas. A video observational method was applied as an input to understand and analyse human movement and behaviour in the real world. Six hours of video recording were recorded at a multi-mode transportation system covering weekdays, weekend, peak and off-peak times. Almost 19,000 individual humans were observed and the behaviour that they exhibited can be divided into six different types (known as Moving Through, Move-Stop-Move, Queuing, Competitive, Avoiding and Passing Through) which were determined from three major human movement types of free, same and opposite direction. Object-oriented gaming software was used to simulate the human movement and behaviour in the virtual environment based on agent-based modelling. Six factors affecting human movement and behaviour in the real world including Personal Objective, Visual Perception, Speed of Movement, Personal Space, Crowd Density and Avoidance Angle or Distance were considered as the parameters for the virtual humans. Case studies considering free, same and opposite direction movement with multi-mode transportation systems, bottleneck and non-bottleneck situations were applied to validate the prototype software system