Evacuation assistants: An extended model for determining effective locations and optimal numbers

The present research presents an extended evacuation field model for simulating crowd emergency evacuation processes under the control of evacuation assistants. Furthermore, a communication field for describing the escape information transmission process and its effect on evacuees is introduced. The effective locations and optimal numbers of evacuation assistants as generated through the model are proposed in an effort to verify as well as enhance existing models. Results show the following. (1) Locating evacuation assistants near exits reduces the time delay for pre-evacuation. (2) There is an optimal number of evacuation assistants for achieving evacuation efficiency; having excessive numbers of evacuation assistants does not improve the evacuation efficiency, and they may result in evacuation time delay and hinder the evacuation efficiency. (3) As the number of evacuees increases, the number of evacuation assistants needed decreases.     

Macroscopic effects of microscopic forces between agents in crowd models

Crowd scenarios have attracted attention from computer modellers, perhaps because of the impracticality of studying the phenomenon by traditional experimental methods. For example, Kirchner has proposed an agent-based crowd model inspired by fields of elementary particles [A. Kirchner, A. Schadschneider, Simulation of evacuation processes using a bionics-inspired cellular automaton model for pedestrian dynamics, Physica A 312 (2002) 260–276.], but chose not to incorporate crowd forces. We argue that crowd forces (and associated injuries) are an essential characteristic of crowds, and that their omission will negatively affect the model's ability to make predictions (e.g. time for a crowd to pass through an exit). To support this position we describe an evolution of Kirchner's model that includes a vector-based particle field to represent forces. We show qualitative and quantitative differences compared to Kirchner's model when force is included. The Swarm Force model demonstrates—by showing non-linear effects of force—the necessity of force in crowd models.     

Effect of exit location on flow of mice under emergency condition

The evacuation of crowds in a building has always emerged as a vital issue in many accidents. The geometrical structure of a room, especially the exit design has a great influence on crowd evacuation under emergency conditions. In this paper, the effect of exit location of a room on crowd evacuation in an emergency is investigated with mice. Two different exits are set in a rectangular chamber. One is located in the middle of a wall(middle-exit) and the other is at the corner of the chamber(corner-exit). Arching and clogging are observed in the flow of mice. The result based on the escape trajectories of mice shows a dynamic balance in the arch near the exit wherever the exit is located. We demonstrate that the occupant position in the arch has an effect on the escape sequence of mice. At a low stimulation level, the narrow middle-exit is more effective in increasing the flow rate of mice than the narrow corner-exit. However, the opposite result appears when the exit becomes wider. At a high stimulation level, the effect of exit location on flow of mice tends to be weakened. The results suggest that the specific level of stimulation needs to be taken into account when optimizing the evacuation efficiency of a crowd through the geometrical structure of a room.     

Occupants’ behavior of going with the crowd based on cellular automata occupant evacuation model

Occupant behavior which is very complex affects evacuation efficiency and route choice a lot. The psychology and behavior of going with the crowd is very common in daily life and also in occupant evacuation. In this paper, a two-dimensional Cellular Automata model is applied to simulate the process of evacuation considering the psychology of going with the crowd with different room structure or occupant density. The psychology of going with the crowd (the abbreviation is GWC) is classified into directional GWC (DGWC) and spatial GWC (SGWC). The influence of two such kinds of psychology on occupant evacuation is discussed in order to provide some useful guidance on the emergency management of evacuation.     

Conflict game in evacuation process: A study combining Cellular Automata model

The game-theoretic approach is an essential tool in the research of conflicts of human behaviors. The aim of this study is to research crowd dynamic conflicts during evacuation processes. By combining a conflict game with a Cellular Automata model, the following factors such as rationality, herding effect and conflict cost are taken into the research on frequency of each strategy of evacuees, and evacuation time. Results from Monte Carlo simulations show that (i) in an emergency condition, rationality leads to “vying” behaviors and inhibited “polite” behavior; (ii) high herding causes a crowd of high rationality (especially in normal circumstances) to become more “vying” in behavior; (iii) the high-rationality crowd is shown to spend more evacuation time than a low-rationality crowd in emergency situations. This study provides a new perspective to understand conflicts in evacuation processes as well as the rationality of evacuees.     

Agent-based modeling of a multi-room multi-floor building emergency evacuation

Panic during emergency building evacuation can cause crowd stampede, resulting in serious injuries and casualties. Agent-based methods have been successfully employed to investigate the collective human behavior during emergency evacuation in cases where the configurational space is extremely simple–usually one rectangular room–but not in evacuations of multi-room or multi-floor buildings. This implies that the effect of the complexity of building architecture on the collective behavior of the agents during evacuation has not been fully investigated. Here, we employ a system of self-moving particles whose motion is governed by the social-force model to investigate the effect of complex building architecture on the uncoordinated crowd motion during urgent evacuation. In particular, we study how the room door size, the size of the main exit, the desired speed and the friction coefficient affect the evacuation time and under what circumstances the evacuation efficiency improves.     

The effect of individual tendency on crowd evacuation efficiency under inhomogeneous exit attraction using a static field modified FFCA model

As an extension of the Asymmetric Simple Exclusion Process, the floor field cellular automata model has its specific advantages in reproducing crowd self-organized phenomena, embodying individual characteristics and reducing the computing complexity by translating the long-ranged interaction to local interaction. Evacuation from a room is an important part in the study of building evacuation. In our experiment and real life observation we found the exit attraction non-uniformity. To obtain the effect of individual tendency to the exit attraction center on the crowd evacuation efficiency, the static field is modified. Compared with the control group, the exit attraction non-uniformity has a disadvantage in the crowd evacuation efficiency. The position deviation between the exit geometric center and the exit attraction center delays the crowd evacuation by generating a local merging flow. In addition, the individual tendency also increases the crowd evacuation time by increasing the static field gradient to the attraction center, leading to a low usage efficiency of exits. Compared with the influence of other factors, the inhomogeneous exit attraction has an obvious effect on the crowd evacuation efficiency.     

A heterogeneous lattice gas model for simulating pedestrian evacuation

Based on the cellular automata method (CA model) and the mobile lattice gas model (MLG model), we have developed a heterogeneous lattice gas model for simulating pedestrian evacuation processes in an emergency. A local population density concept is introduced first. The update rule in the new model depends on the local population density and the exit crowded degree factor. The drift D, which is one of the key parameters influencing the evacuation process, is allowed to change according to the local population density of the pedestrians. Interactions including attraction, repulsion, and friction between every two pedestrians and those between a pedestrian and the building wall are described by a nonlinear function of the corresponding distance, and the repulsion forces increase sharply as the distances get small. A critical force of injury is introduced into the model, and its effects on the evacuation process are investigated. The model proposed has heterogeneous features as compared to the MLG model or the basic CA model. Numerical examples show that the model proposed can capture the basic features of pedestrian evacuation, such as clogging and arching phenomena.     

Lattice gas simulation and experiment study of evacuation dynamics

In this paper, evacuation dynamics in an office building is studied by experiment and simulation. A lattice gas (LG) model is developed. A parameter called ‘exit bias’ is introduced into the model to describe the occupants’ familiarity with different exits in a building. The evacuation experiment, which consists of seven scenarios under various conditions, is conducted to verify the model and calibrate the model’s input parameters such as pedestrian speed and exit bias. The effect of exit width on flow rate, and the effect of occupants’ familiarity with the building on their route selections, are studied. It is found that the accuracy of simulation depends a lot on the model’s pedestrian speed. The optimal pedestrian speed is decided by not only occupant characteristics, but also flow features determined by people distribution, building structure, environment pressure, etc. LG models with proper pedestrian speed are capable of simulating the dynamic process of orderly emergency evacuations.     

A numerical study of contact force in competitive evacuation

Crowd force by the pushing or crushing of people has resulted in a number of accidents in recent decades. The aftermath investigations have shown that the physical interaction of a highly competitive crowd could produce dangerous pressure up to 4500 N/m, which leads to compressive asphyxia or even death. In this paper, a numerical model based on discrete element method(DEM) as referenced from granular flow was proposed to model the evacuation process of a group of highly competitive people, in which the movement of people follows Newton's second law and the body deformation due to compression follows Hertz contact model. The study shows that the clogs occur periodically and flow rate fluctuates greatly if all people strive to pass through a narrow exit at high enough desired velocity. Two types of contact forces acting on people are studied. The first one, i.e., vector contact force, accounts for the movement of the people following Newton's second law. The second one, i.e., scale contact force, accounts for the physical deformation of the human body following the contact law. Simulation shows that the forces chain in crowd flow is turbulent and fragile. A few narrow zones with intense forces are observed in the force field, which is similar to the strain localization observed in granular flow. The force acting on a person could be as high as 4500 N due to force localization, which may be the root cause of compressive asphyxia of people in many crowd incidents.     

Experimental study and numerical simulation of evacuation from a dormitory

The evacuation process of students from a dormitory is investigated by both experiment and modeling. We investigate the video record of pedestrian movement in a dormitory, and find some typical characteristics of evacuation, including continuous pedestrian flow, mass behavior and so on. Based on the experimental observation, we found that simulation results considering pre-movement time are closer to the experimental results. With the model considering pre-movement time, we simulate the evacuation process and compare the simulation results with the experimental results, and find that they agree with each other closely. The crowd massing phenomenon is conducted in this paper. It is found that different crowd massing phenomena will emerge due to different desired velocities. The crowd massing phenomenon could be more serious with the increase of the desired velocity. In this study, we also found the faster-is-slower effect. When the positive effect produced by increasing the desired velocity is not sufficient for making up for its negative effect, the phenomenon of the greater the desired velocity the longer the time required for evacuation will emerge. From the video record, it can be observed that the mass behavior is obvious during the evacuation process. And the mass phenomenon could also be found in simulation. The results obtained from our study are also suitable to all these buildings in which both living and resting areas occupy the majority space, such as dormitories, residential buildings, hotels (restaurants) and so on.     

Spatial memory enhances the evacuation efficiency of virtual pedestrians under poor visibility condition

Spatial memory is a critical navigation support tool for disoriented evacuees during evacuation under adverse environmental conditions such as dark or smoky conditions. Owing to the complexity of memory, it is challenging to understand the effect of spatial memory on pedestrian evacuation quantitatively. In this study, we propose a simple method to quantitatively represent the evacuee's spatial memory about the emergency exit, model the evacuation of pedestrians under the guidance of the spatial memory, and investigate the effect of the evacuee's spatial memory on the evacuation from theoretical and physical perspectives. The result shows that(i) a good memory can significantly assist the evacuation of pedestrians under poor visibility conditions, and the evacuation can always succeed when the degree of the memory exceeds a threshold(? 0.5);(ii) the effect of memory is superior to that of "follow-the-crowd" under the same environmental conditions;(iii)in the case of multiple exits, the difference in the degree of the memory between evacuees has a significant effect(the greater the difference, the faster the evacuation) for the evacuation under poor visibility conditions. Our study provides a new quantitative insight into the effect of spatial memory on crowd evacuation under poor visibility conditions.     

Experiment and modeling of exit-selecting behaviors during a building evacuation

The evacuation process in a teaching building with two neighboring exits is investigated by means of experiment and modeling. The basic parameters such as flow, density and velocity of pedestrians in the exit area are measured. The exit-selecting phenomenon in the experiment is analyzed, and it is found that pedestrians prefer selecting the closer exit even though the other exit is only a little far. In order to understand the phenomenon, we reproduce the experiment process with a modified biased random walk model, in which the preference of closer exit is achieved using the drift direction and the drift force. Our simulation results afford a calibrated value of the drift force, especially when it is 0.56, there is good agreement between the simulation results and the experimental results on the number of pedestrians selecting the closer exit, the average velocity through the exits, the cumulative distribution of the instantaneous velocity and the fundamental diagram of the flow through exits. According to the further simulation results, it is found that pedestrians tend to select the exit with shorter distance to them, especially when the people density is small or medium. But if the density is large enough, the flow rates of the two exits will become comparable because of the detour behaviors. It reflects the fact that a crowd of people may not be rational to optimize the usage of multi-exits, especially in an emergency.     

Evacuation behaviors at exit in CA model with force essentials: A comparison with social force model

The problem of emergent evacuation is of obvious importance in common life. However, many existing evacuation models are either computationally inefficient, or are missing some crucial human behaviors in crowds. In this paper, we improve a cellular automata (CA) model introduced recently, which quantifies evacuation process with three basic forces, and compare its performance with the social force model introduced by Helbing et al. in an 200-people evacuation of a single-exit square room. The main characteristics compared include arching, clogging and faster-is-slower behaviors, as well as the evacuation time. The results show that the two models are comparable in all calculations, indicating that the three forces, i.e., repulsion, friction and attraction, are basic reasons for complex behaviors emerged from evacuation. Furthermore, because of its simple rules and fast calculation speed, the discussed CA model is easily analyzed and is very helpful to the applications.     

A model for simulation of crowd behaviour in the evacuation from a smoke-filled compartment

The modelling of crowd evacuation from a building has been studied over the past decades. In this study, a numerical model based on cellular automaton is proposed to simulate the human behaviour termed “flow with the stream” in emergency evacuation from a large smoke-filled compartment. In the model, the smoke effect in the context of visibility is considered since visibility range can affect the human behaviour significantly. To simulate the reality that the smoke concentration in a fire compartment is not constant, the proposed model is developed to deal with the scenario in which the visibility range varies in the course of time. An empirical formula is incorporated into the proposed model to estimate the visibility range. The results of numerical tests show that the proposed model can also be used to investigate the effect of the number of guiders through case study.     

Three-dimensional lattice Boltzmann method for simulating blood flow in aortic arch

The three-dimensional （3D） lattice Boltzmann models, 3DQ15, 3DQ19 and 3DQ27, under different wall boundary conditions and lattice resolutions have been investigated by simulating Poiseuille flow in a circular cylinder for a wide range of Reynolds numbers. The 3DQ19 model with improved Fillippova and Hanel （FH） curved boundary condition represents a good compromise between computational efficiency and reliability. Blood flow in an aortic arch is then simulated as a typical haemodynamic application. Axial and secondary fluid velocity and effective wall shear stress profiles in a 180° bend are obtained, and the results also demonstrate that the lattice Boltzmann method is suitable for simulating the flow in 3D large-curved vessels.     

Modeling of pedestrian evacuation under fire emergency based on an extended heterogeneous lattice gas model

An extended heterogeneous lattice gas (E-HLG) model is developed by introducing an altitude factor into the heterogeneous lattice gas (HLG) model. The altitude factor is used to describe the position height of lattice sites. Evacuation features from a terrace classroom are investigated through simulations using both the model and experiments. To study evacuation processes under fire emergency, an agent-based fire and pedestrian interaction (FPI) model is proposed. It is supposed that the possible moving directions of a pedestrian depend on the environmental temperature field, which is simulated by the software FDS. The walking speed reduction due to the visibility worsening in the FPI model is described by a multi-grid method. It is found that simulation results based on the extended HLG model are in good agreement with the experiments. The altitude factor plays a guidance role to the evacuation, and the fire notably delays the evacuation due to both the harmfulness of the high temperature field and the change of evacuation routes which results in frequent local jamming and clogging.     

Simulation study of pedestrian flow in a station hall during the Spring Festival travel rush

The Spring Festival is the most important festival in China. How can passengers go home smoothly and quickly during the Spring Festival travel rush, especially when emergencies of terrible winter weather happen? By modifying the social force model, we simulated the pedestrian flow in a station hall. The simulation revealed casualties happened when passengers escaped from panic induced by crowd turbulence. The results suggest that passenger numbers, ticket checking patterns, baggage volumes, and anxiety can affect the speed of passing through the waiting corridor. Our approach is meaningful in understanding the feature of a crowd moving and can be served to reproduce mass events. Therefore, it not only develops a realistic modeling of pedestrian flow but also is important for a better preparation of emergency management.     

基于教室人群疏散实验的行人流建模和模拟

基于教室人群疏散实验, 从中归纳出疏散过程中行人的基本运动特征. 将桌椅分别视为不可穿越和可穿越的静态障碍物, 而行人则被当成可移动的障碍物, 这将导致背景场随人群的运动而动态更新, 因此可以更好地反映前方拥挤程度对后面人群路径选择行为的影响. 采用基于动态背景场的元胞自动机模型研究了不同桌椅排列和出口宽度的教室人群疏散过程, 给出了疏散时间的空间分布以及平均和最大疏散时间, 再现了实验中人群疏散的基本特征. 数值模拟结果表明, 疏散时间取决于桌椅的排列方式和教室出口的宽度. 对于同一种排列, 出口越小则疏散时间越长; 对于给定的出口宽度, 通常随着过道数的增加, 疏散时间随之减少; 当过道数增加且过道宽度不足以两人并行, 从两侧进入过道的行人会发生冲突, 使疏散效率有所降低; 靠近出口一侧墙壁设置过道有利于人群的疏散. 文中进一步分析了模拟与实验结果存在差异的原因.     

Study on evacuation behaviors at a T-shaped intersection by a force-driving cellular automata model

A force-driving cellular automata model considering the social force on cell movement, such as the desirous willing of a pedestrian to exit, the repulsive interaction among pedestrians or between pedestrians and obstacles, was set up to investigate the evacuation behaviors of pedestrians at a T-shaped intersection. And an analogical formulation, taking reference of the magnetic force, was introduced to describe the above repulsive actions. Based on the model, the evacuation behaviors of pedestrians were simulated in terms of different pedestrian density, distribution and corridor width, and then evacuation time was obtained and analyzed. Furthermore, an experiment was conducted to verify the results of the presented model. The results demonstrate that when the density of pedestrians is greater than a certain threshold, pedestrians of a certain direction would be jammed by the repulsion from pedestrians of the counter flow from another direction, and the evacuation time of the former would be longer, even though they are closer to the exit, which would possibly result in a serious casualty in an emergency circumstance. And the phenomenon has been validated by the experiments well. In addition, a corresponding critical corridor width related to different DOPs, beyond which the evacuation time could be decreased rapidly due to a strong degradation of jamming behaviors near the T-shaped intersection, was also discovered and predicted by the proposed model.