Influences of exit and stair conditions on human evacuation in a dormitory

Evacuation processes of students are investigated by experiment and simulation. The experiment is performed for students evacuating from a dormitory with an exit and stairs. FDS+Evac is proposed to simulate the exit and stair dynamics of occupant evacuation. Concerning the exit and stair widths, we put forward some useful standpoints. Good agreement is achieved between the predicted results and experimental results. With the increase of exit width, a significant stratification phenomenon will be found in flow rate. Stratification phenomenon is that two different stable flow rates will emerge during the evacuation. And the flow rate curve looks like a ladder. The larger the exit width, the earlier the stratification phenomenon appears. When exit width is more than 2.0 m, the flow rate of each exit width is divided into two stable stages, and the evacuation times show almost no change. The judgment that the existence of stairs causes flow stratification is reasonable. By changing the width of the stairs, we proved that judgment. The smaller the width of BC, the earlier the stratification appears. We found that scenario 5 is the most adverse circumstance. Those results are helpful in performance-based design of buildings.     

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.     

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.     

双出口房间人群疏散的实验研究和数学建模

本文设计了一个双出口房间内人群疏散的实验方案,通过不同条件下疏散过程的实况录像及视频检测,得到不同人数疏散时间的许多定量结果.提出了双出口房间吸引区间的概念,证明了较小出口吸引区间的边界总是一段圆弧,可以解释行人流出口处的圆形成拱现象.通过类比地铁候车厅内人群疏散过程,建立了双出口房间内疏散时间的二次函数模型,成功拟合不同条件下的实测数据.疏散人数较少时,疏散时间随着人数增加而线性增长;人数较多,在出口附近出现待行区域时,疏散时间则呈二次函数增长.与一些已知疏散时间数学模型相比,本文模型对出口宽度变化的反应更敏感.     

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.     

Cellular Automaton Simulation of Evacuation Process in Story

Computer simulations on the evacuation process in a story are launched with cellular automaton in this article. The story is composed of five rooms and one corridor. Influence of various parameters on the evacuation process is investigated. It shows that the width of the door of rooms has little influence but the width of the corridor and the maximum velocity of the pedestrian have great influence on the time for evacuation. The relation between evacuation time and the width of corridor is found as tc ∝ W^-0.84. It is also found that appropriate shape of the room is helpful to evacuation.     

基于元胞自动机的行人疏散流仿真研究

基于元胞自动机对行人疏散流进行仿真研究.模型利用两个动态参数反映行人移动区域内的疏散情况,从而决定行人的行为选择.模型中行人可以根据自身周围的情况选择移动、等待行为.本文仿真研究了行人在正常疏散环境下,系统规模、疏散人数、安全出口宽度、多个安全出口布局对行人疏散时间的影响.研究结果表明,行人疏散时间随行人数量呈线性增加;随安全出口宽度呈负指数性减少;同时,多个安全出口布局的不平衡也会对行人的疏散过程和疏散时间产生一定的影响. 关键词： 元胞自动机 行人疏散流 动态参数 疏散时间     

Required width of exit to avoid the faster-is-slower effect in highly competitive evacuation

A group of competitive people escaping through an exit could lead to the formation of a deadlock, which significantly increases the evacuation time. Such a phenomenon is called the faster-is-slower effect(FIS) and it has been experimentally verified in different systems of particles flowing through an opening. In this paper, the numerical simulation based on discrete element method(DEM) is adopted to study a group of highly competitive people through an exit of varying widths. The FIS effect is observed for a narrow exit whilst it is not observed for the exit wide enough to accommodate two people through it side-by-side. Experimental validation of such a phenomenon with humans is difficult due to ethical issues. The mouse is a kind of self-driven and soft-body creature and it exhibits selfish behaviour under stressed conditions.Particles flowing through an opening in different systems, such as pedestrian flow, animal flow, silo flow, etc. have similar characteristics. Therefore, experimental study is conducted by driving mice to escape through an exit of different widths at varying levels of stimulus. The escape time through a narrow exit(i.e., 2 cm) increases obviously with the increase of stimulus level but it is quite opposite to a wider exit(i.e., 4 cm). The FIS effect is avoided for an exit wide enough to accommodate two mice passing through it side-by-side. The study illustrates that FIF effect could be effectively prevented for an exit when its width is twice the size of particles.     

Effect of a static pedestrian as an exit obstacle on evacuation

Building exit as a bottleneck structure is the last and the most congested stage in building evacuation. It is well known that obstacles at the exit affect the evacuation process, but few researchers pay attention to the effect of stationary pedestrians (the elderly with slow speed, the injured, and the static evacuation guide) as obstacles at the exit on the evacuation process. This paper explores the influence of the presence of a stationary pedestrian as an obstacle at the exit on the evacuation from experiments and simulations. We use a software, Pathfinder, based on the agent-based model to study the effect of ratios of exit width ($D$) to distance ($d$) between the static pedestrian and the exit, the asymmetric structure by shifting the static pedestrian upward, and types of obstacles on evacuation. Results show that the evacuation time of scenes with a static pedestrian is longer than that of scenes with an obstacle due to the unexpected hindering effect of the static pedestrian. Different ratios of $D/d$ have different effects on evacuation efficiency. Among the five $D/d$ ratios in this paper, the evacuation efficiency is the largest when $d$ is equal to $0.75D$, and the existence of the static pedestrian has a positive impact on evacuation in this condition. The influence of the asymmetric structure of the static pedestrian on evacuation efficiency is affected by $D/d$. This study can provide a theoretical basis for crowd management and evacuation plan near the exit of complex buildings and facilities.     

Inverted regions induced by geometric constraints on a classical encounter-controlled binary reaction

A two-dimensional Cellular Automata model is proposed to simulate the exit dynamics of occupant evacuation. Concerning the exit width and the door separation, we put forward some useful standpoints: (1) exit width should be bigger than a critical value, and the door separation should be neither too small nor too big; (2) for single-exit door, with the increase of exit width, the flux per unit width will decrease but the total flux will always increase; (3) the total flux of the exit is an increasing nonlinear function of the exit width; (4) the optimal value of the door separation does not vary with the value of exit width; (5) the layout of exits should be symmetry. Those results are helpful in performance-based design of building.     

Cellular automaton model for evacuation process with obstacles

A bidimensional cellular automaton model is used to simulate the process of evacuation of pedestrians in a room with fixed obstacles. A floor field is defined so that moving to a cell with lower floor field means approaching an exit door. The model becomes non-deterministic by introducing a “panic” parameter, given by a probability of not moving, and by a random choice to resolve conflicts in the update of pedestrian positions. Two types of exit doors are considered: single (where only one person can pass) and double (two persons can pass simultaneously). For a double door, the longest evacuation time turns out to occur for a very traditional location of the door. The optimum door position is determined. Replacing the double door by two single doors does not improve evacuation times noticeably. On the other hand, for a room without obstacles, a simple scaling law is proposed to model the dependence of evacuation time with the number of persons and exit width. This model fails when obstacles are present, as their presence introduces local bottlenecks whose effect outweighs the benefits of increasing door width beyond a certain threshold.     

Lattice-gas simulation of escaping pedestrian flow in corridor

A lattice-gas model of biased-random walkers is used to simulate the escaping pedestrian flow under the open boundary condition in corridor. Given that the total number of people is unchanging, we have studied the evolution of pedestrian flow by varying parameters of system size. Relationships between parameters of system size and the transition time are discussed in this paper. Scaling behaviour is found as follows: the transition time t_c scales as t_c∝W^{-0.85±0.04}, and t_c∝D, where W is the width of corridor, and D is the strength of drift. However, the other parameters are found to have little influence on the transition time.     

三维空间行人疏散的元胞自动机模型

为了有效刻画行人在三维空间中的疏散状况,结合阶梯因素提出了一种新的三维元胞自动机模型,该模型首先基于位置吸引力和碰撞可能性给出了行人移动概率的计算公式,并通过定义元胞演化过程阐述其疏散策略,同时,利用建立的仿真平台进行实验,深入分析了疏散时间、出口流率、出口宽度、初始行人密度以及系统平均速度之间的关系,以此获得更加符合实际情况的行人流特征,结果表明,疏散时间、出口流率与初始行人密度呈现正相关,而与出口宽度呈现负相关,并且系统平均速度和出口宽度对于最优疏散时间存在一个理想阈值。     

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.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

菱形网格的行人疏散元胞自动机模型

利用改进的层次域元胞自动机模型,研究了正菱形网格空间中的行人疏散问题.这类网格可以避免行人贴近房间墙壁或障碍物,转移概率考虑了各种逃生受阻因素.数值仿真显示,出口处的行人分布与实验快照展示的行人分布基本相同,疏散时间和出口宽度呈线性关系,行人流率接近实验结果.     

Simulation of pedestrian evacuation based on an improved dynamic parameter model

An improved dynamic parameter model is presented based on cellular automata. The dynamic parameters, including direction parameter, empty parameter, and cognition parameter, are formulated to simplify tactically the process of making decisions for pedestrians. The improved model reflects the judgement of pedestrians on surrounding conditions and the action of choosing or decision. According to the two-dimensional cellular automaton Moore neighborhood we establish the pedestrian moving rule, and carry out corresponding simulations of pedestrian evacuation. The improved model considers the impact of pedestrian density near exits on the evacuation process. Simulated and experimental results demonstrate that the improvement makes sense due to the fact that except for the spatial distance to exits, people also choose an exit according to the pedestrian density around exits. The impact factors α, β, and γ are introduced to describe transition payoff, and their optimal values are determined through simulation. Moreover, the effects of pedestrian distribution, pedestrian density, and the width of exits on the evacuation time are discussed. The optimal exit layout, i.e., the optimal position and width, is offered. The comparison between the simulated results obtained with the improved model and that from a previous model and experiments indicates that the improved model can reproduce experimental results well. Thus, it has great significance for further study, and important instructional meaning for pedestrian evacuation so as to reduce the number of casualties.     

Exit selection strategy in pedestrian evacuation simulation with multi-exits

A mixed strategy of the exit selection in a pedestrian evacuation simulation with multi-exits is constructed by fusing the distance-based and time-based strategies through a cognitive coefficient, in order to reduce the evacuation imbalance caused by the asymmetry of exits or pedestrian layout, to find a critical density to distinguish whether the strategy of exit selection takes effect or not, and to analyze the exit selection results with different cognitive coefficients. The strategy of exit selection is embedded in the computation of the shortest estimated distance in a dynamic parameter model, in which the concept of a jam area layer and the procedure of step-by-step expending are introduced. Simulation results indicate the characteristics of evacuation time gradually varying against cognitive coefficient and the effectiveness of reducing evacuation imbalance caused by the asymmetry of pedestrian or exit layout. It is found that there is a critical density to distinguish whether a pedestrian jam occurs in the evacuation and whether an exit selection strategy is in effect. It is also shown that the strategy of exit selection has no effect on the evacuation process in the no-effect phase with a low density, and that evacuation time and exit selection are dependent on the cognitive coefficient and pedestrian initial density in the in-effect phase with a high density.