Pedestrian, Crowd, and Evacuation Dynamics

This contribution describes efforts to model the behavior of individual pedestrians and their interactions in crowds, which generate certain kinds of self-organized patterns of motion. Moreover, this article focusses on the dynamics of crowds in panic or evacuation situations, methods to optimize building designs for egress, and factors potentially causing the breakdown of orderly motion.Comment: This is a review paper. For related work see http://www.soms.ethz.c

Study of Heterogeneous Agents Crowd Dynamic

Di dalam situasi kecemasan, orang ramai sering mempamerkan tingkah laku tidak menentu yang boleh membawa kepada malapetaka yang besar jika tidak ditangani dengan baik. Fokus utama kajian ini adalah untuk mengkaji ejen heterogen di khalayak ramai dalam kepadatan yang berbeza, di dalam arena tertentu. Pemodelan dan simulasi ejen heterogen di khalayak ramai memerlukan pemahaman tingkah laku manusia. Apabila keadaan panik berlaku, setiap individu bertindak balas secara berbeza di mana ia bergantung kepada pelbagai faktor seperti sentuhan fizikal, emosi, daya tarikan, tempat dan lain-lain lagi. Kombinasi tingkah laku individu ini akhirnya mewujudkan tingkah laku orang ramai. Apabila keadaan panik berlaku, motivasi setiap ejen meninggalkan arena secepat mungkin dengan mematuhi peraturan pengikut, pengelompokan dan mengelak halangan. Model ini dilaksanakan menggunakan NetLogo versi 5.0.4, di mana alat simulasi ini memberi kecekapan yang tinggi sesuai untuk mengsimulasi fenomena yang kompleks. Analisis utama projek ini ialah mengira purata masa pemindahan dan kadar tindak balas untuk meninggalkan arena di bawah pengaruh dua pembolehubah. Apabila peratusan ejen B bertambah, purata masa pemindahan dan kadar tindak balas menjadi lebih baik. Manakala, apabila bilangan populasi meningkat, kadar tindak balas untuk meninggalkan arena menjadi lebih cepat, namun purata masa pemindahan menjadi perlahan. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ In an emergency, members of a crowd often exhibit unpredictable behavior which can lead to major catastrophes if not well managed. The focus of this research was to study the crowd dynamics of heterogeneous agents, at differing densities, within a particular enclosed arena. Modelling and simulating the crowd dynamics of heterogeneous agents requires an understanding of human behavior. Each individual reacts differently to a panic, based on diverse factors like physical contact, emotion, attraction, sights and many others. It is the combination of these individual behaviors that ultimately affects crowd behavior. When a panic occurs, the motivation of each agent is to leave the arena as soon as possible by obeying the flocking rule, the follower rule, and obstacle avoidance rule. The implementation of this model was done using NetLogo version 5.0.4, which provided great efficiency in simulating multiple agents and is suitable for simulating complex phenomena. The analysis of this project focuses on average evacuation time and response rate to clear the arena under the influence of two variables. As the percentage of B agents (able to see 15 patches, and simulating greater knowledge of the arena) increased, the average evacuation time and response rate improved. As the population increased, the response rate to clear the arena become faster, however the average evacuation time become slower

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

Students' evacuation behavior during an emergency at schools:A systematic literature review

Disasters and emergencies frequently happen, and some of them require population evacuation. Children can be severely affected during evacuations due to their lower capability to analyze, perceive, and answer disaster risks. Although several studies attempted to address the safety of children during the evacuation, the existing literature lacks a systematic review of students' evacuation behavior during school time. Therefore, this study aims to conduct a systematic literature review to explore how students' evacuation behavior during school time has been addressed by previous scholars and identify gaps in knowledge. The review process included three steps: formulating the research question, establishing strategic search strategies, and data extraction and analysis. The studies have been identified by searching academic search engines and refined the recognized publications unbiasedly. The researchers have then thematically analyzed the objectives and findings of the selected studies resulting in the identification of seven themes in the field of students' evacuation behavior during school time. Finally, the study put forward suggestions for future research directions to efficiently address the recognized knowledge gaps.</p

A Comprehensive Study on Pedestrians' Evacuation

Human beings face threats because of unexpected happenings, which can be avoided through an adequate crisis evacuation plan, which is vital to stop wound and demise as its negative results. Consequently, different typical evacuation pedestrians have been created. Moreover, through applied research, these models for various applications, reproductions, and conditions have been examined to present an operational model. Furthermore, new models have been developed to cooperate with system evacuation in residential places in case of unexpected events. This research has taken into account an inclusive and a 'systematic survey of pedestrian evacuation' to demonstrate models methods by focusing on the applications' features, techniques, implications, and after that gather them under various types, for example, classical models, hybridized models, and generic model. The current analysis assists scholars in this field of study to write their forthcoming papers about it, which can suggest a novel structure to recent typical intelligent reproduction with novel features

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

A Coupled SFM-ASCRIBE Model To Investigate the Influence of Emotions and Collective Behavior in Homogeneous and Heterogeneous Crowds

The understanding of crowd behavior dynamics holds immense significance in ensuring public safety across a range of situations, including emergency evacuations and large-scale events. Our research focuses on two primary objectives: investigating the impact of emotions on crowd movement and gaining valuable insights into collective behavior within crowds. To achieve this, we present a coupled model, incorporating an enhanced ASCRIBE model with an agent displacement model. We introduce heterogeneity into our model by incorporating specific mobility laws for different categories of panicked crowds, considering the influence of emotions on both speed and direction. Through numerical simulations, we analyze the model's parameters, observe the behavior of uniform crowds, and explore the collective dynamics within diverse crowds. By conducting comprehensive simulations and analyses, the findings from this study can contribute to the development of more effective crowd management strategies and emergency evacuation protocols

A Study on Human Evacuation Behavior Involving Individuals with Disabilities in a Building

The individuals with disabilities are disproportionately vulnerable to hazards. However, there is very little research inquiry focused on evacuation environments and the behavior of individuals with disabilities. The most widely applied computational method used to study how effective the built environment facilities emergency evacuations in individuals-based modeling. Current pedestrian evacuation models rarely include individuals with disabilities in their simulated populations due to there being very few empirical studies of the evacuation behavior of individuals with disabilities. As a result, the models do not replicate accurate patterns of pedestrian or evacuation behavior of a heterogeneous population, which results in the evacuation needs of individuals with disabilities being generally overlooked. To begin addressing this limitation, our research group at Utah State University (USU) has performed empirical research to observe the microscopic evacuation behavior of individuals with disabilities in heterogeneous population contexts. The purpose of this research was to: (1) develop and analyze evacuation curves to understand and assess evacuation strategies for heterogeneous populations, and (2) analyze the microscopic behavior of evacuees at exit doors necessary for developing credible and valid pedestrian and evacuation models. Doing so will contribute to evacuation models which replicate accurate patterns of pedestrian and evacuation behavior of heterogeneous populations, leading to the consideration of the evacuation needs of individuals with disabilities

One-way coupling of fire and egress modeling for realistic evaluation of evacuation process

In the discipline of fire engineering, computational simulation tools are used to evaluate the available safe egress time (ASET) and required safe egress time (RSET) of a building fire. ASET and RSET are often analyzed separately, using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and crowd dynamics, respectively. Although there are advantages to coupling the ASET and RSET analysis to quantify tenability conditions and reevaluate evacuation time within a building, the coupling process is computationally complex, requiring multiple steps. The coupling setup can be time-consuming, particularly when the results are limited to the modeled scenario. In addition, the procedure is not uniform throughout the industry. This paper presents the successful one-way coupling of CFD and crowd dynamics modeling through a new simplified methodology that captures the impact of fractional effective dose (FED) and reduced visibility from smoke on the individual evacuee’s movement and the human interaction. The simulation tools used were Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS) and Oasys MassMotion for crowd dynamics. The coupling was carried out with the help of the software development kit of Oasys MassMotion in two different example geometries: an open-plan room and a floor with six rooms and a corridor. The results presented in this paper show that, when comparing an uncoupled and a coupled simulation, the effects of the smoke lead to different crowd density profiles, particularly closer to the exit, which elongates the overall evacuation time. This coupling method can be applied to any geometry because of its flexible and modular framework

A study of herding behaviour in exit choice during emergencies based on random utility theory.

Modelling human behaviour in emergencies has become an important issue in safety engineering. Good behavioural models can help increase the safety of transportation systems and buildings in extreme situations like fires or terrorist attacks. Although it is well known that the interaction with other decision makers affects human behaviour, the role of social influences during evacuations still needs to be investigated. This paper contributes to fill this gap by analysing the occurrence of Herding Behaviour (HB) in exit choice. Theoretical explanations of HB are presented together with some modelling approaches used in different fields where HB is relevant. A discrete choice stated preference experiment is then carried out to study the role of HB in the decision-making process concerning exit choice during evacuation. A binary logit model is proposed showing that the occurrences of HB are affected by both environmental and personal factors. In particular, the model shows that the personal aptitude to HB can have a key role in selecting an exit