A Memory-Based Evacuation Navigation Model in Complex High-Rise Buildings

In contemporary society, safety issues are the main focus in the field of pedestrian and evacuation dynamics. As for complex high-rise buildings, the navigation strategies of evacuees still need to be further studied. Previous types of research has contributed to the construction of evacuation navigation model in complex high-rise buildings, where pedestrians are regarded as having an omniscient view in most of these models. In reality, evacuees’ perception is always limited, especially when the scenario is complex. In this contribution, pedestrians’ perception procedure is considered by computing the visible space so that the occlusion of the visual field can be estimated. In addition, human memory progress is modeled. Not all parts of environmental information would be remembered. Driven by evacuees’ memory data, a proposed dynamical shortest path algorithm will be periodically implemented or suddenly triggered by incidents during the simulation. For the pedestrians who have no enough knowledge about the evacuation scenario, a communication system is utilized so that information can be obtained from well-knowledged pedestrian, and an autonomous way-finding system will be executed when useful information cannot be acquired through near evacuees. For the microscopic perspective, human following and avoidance behavior is modeled. Simulations in two different types of scenarios are conducted. The knowledge level of simulated agents is gradually evolved by in-room free exploration. Results in different conditions show that the proposed memory-based model can reproduce pedestrians’ observation, turn-back, communication, and searching behavior. The intense conflict caused by the bidirectional crowd is observed and analyzed. In addition, the effects of knowledge level are investigated. The presented model in this contribution can be promising and useful in safety engineering

Neuroplasticity of the Sensorimotor Cortex during Learning

We will discuss some of the current issues in understanding plasticity in the sensorimotor (SM) cortices on the behavioral, neurophysiological, and synaptic levels. We will focus our paper on reaching and grasping movements in the rat. In addition, we will discuss our preliminary work utilizing inhibition of protein kinase Mζ (PKMζ), which has recently been shown necessary and sufficient for the maintenance of long-term potentiation (LTP) (Ling et al., 2002). With this new knowledge and inhibitors to this system, as well as the ability to overexpress this system, we can start to directly modulate LTP and determine its influence on behavior as well as network level processing dependent at least in part due to this form of LTP. We will also briefly introduce the use of brain machine interface (BMI) paradigms to ask questions about sensorimotor plasticity and discuss current analysis techniques that may help in our understanding of neuroplasticity

Movement Properties of Elderly Pedestrians in the Bottleneck Flow With Different Compositions

With the development of aging society, the proportion of the old population is ascending continually. The elders facing the challenge of impaired mobility and decreasing flexibility will affect the dynamic characteristics of pedestrian flow. While the study of the evacuation dynamic mainly focuses on the young for the limited experimental conditions. The movement of elderly pedestrians are seldom investigated. However, the comprehensive understanding of the influence of the elders on the pedestrian flow is essential for facility design and evacuation management. Therefore, a series of comparative experiments between the separate elderly group, separate young group and the mixed group (38 elders and 63 young) are carried out to study the movement properties of elderly pedestrians in the bottleneck flow with different compositions quantitatively. The mixture of the elderly and the young makes the efficiency decrease significantly. In the mixed group, the speed of the young pedestrians is lower than that of the elders for the young slow down to avoid collisions. The young kept a certain distance from the elders for the sake of safety, so that the high-density profiles of the mixed group present as long strips. In addition, pedestrians in the mixed group have longer time lapse than that in the separate groups when passing the bottleneck. In the separate groups, the spatial distribution of the nearest neighbour presents as a uniform circle. The spatial distance between the elderly (0.46 m) is bigger than that between the young (0.39 m). While there is no obvious difference in the mixed group. The results can be used in pedestrian modelling, facilities designing and evacuation management for the population with old people

Microscopic Characteristics and Modelling of Pedestrian Inflow Process with Inactive Persons

Inflow and outflow processes are common phenomena in daily life. Many types of research have been conducted to study the features of the outflow process, especially in scenarios with a single room or a straight corridor. A few scholars have paid attention to the movement characteristics of pedestrian inflow. Further explorations are still under great demand. In this contribution, a set of pre-conducted experiments are used to analyze the characteristics of the pedestrian inflow process with inactive persons. In these experiments, inactive persons were required to randomly cease within the room, leading to intensive detour behavior of pedestrians. The characteristics are carefully investigated using gradient analysis and curl analysis. To mimic the aforementioned inflow process, static global field is constructed to heuristically navigate a social force based microscopic model. The proposed model can reproduce the self-organized phenomena in the experiments. Our work can help understand the field feature of the pedestrian inflow process with inactive persons. High chaos level areas can be marked out providing practical information for managers

The difference between individuals and social groups in multidirectional movement

Social groups exhibit some degree of social cohesion that is more than a simple collection or aggregation of individuals. The study on behaviours of social groups is essential to gain a deeper understanding on pedestrian dynamics. In this paper, the crowd movement among individuals and social groups are studied by performing a series of multidirectional pedestrian flow experiments under laboratory condition. Interestingly, we found that the speed of individual is not always higher than that of social groups. Pedestrians try to use different strategies to arrive their destination. With different strategies, their speed and movement time show different properties. These findings may provide basis for facility design and evacuation plan