Simulation of pedestrian evacuation strategies under limited visibility

Evacuation process under limited visibility is different from that under good visibility. To investigate the evacuation efficiency under limited visibility, different evacuation strategies including walking along the wall (S1), following the average movement direction (S2) and following the average position (S3) are proposed in this paper. Performances of these strategies under different visibilities, densities and exit widths are compared based on a revised social force model. Simulation results show that strategy S1 is more effective at low densities while strategy S2 and S3 are more efficient at high densities. It is noted that strategy S2 outperforms S3 under the same condition. In addition, strategy S1 is not sensitive to the change of exit width due to the movement mode of walking along the wall, while the following strategies (S2 and S3) have a better performance under the wide exit condition. The evacuation time for different proportions of pedestrians adopting one strategy in the mixed strategy situation is investigated and the optimal mixture proportion is also discussed. This study provides a new insight into the effect of different evacuation strategies on pedestrian evacuation, which is helpful for evacuees or organizers of public events to make an efficient evacuation plan under limited visibility.