To minimize property loss and death count in terror attacks and other emergent scenarios, attention given to timely and effective evacuation cannot be enough. Due to limited evacuation resource, i.e., number of available exits, there exists interdependence among pedestrians such as cooperation, competition and herd effect. Thus human factors - more specifically, pedestrians' behavior in emergency evacuation - play a significant role in evacuation research. Effective evacuation can only be reached when route planning are considered in conjunction with psychological dynamics, which is often ignored. As another drawback, previous research assumes the environment including available exits as stationary. However, we note that during emergency, some exits which are not often utilized in normal times are opened, which potentially helps if pedestrians are aware of them. In this paper, we analyze the effect of pedestrians' behavior, i.e., herd effect and knowledge of changing environment with Cellular Automata (CA) simulation. Results of the simulation show the harmful effect of herd effect as well as highlight the importance of timely informing pedestrians of environmental change. Accordingly, we propose policy and procedural recommendations for emergency management of large, crowded structures. Our future work includes considering more human factors and applying our model to log data provided by videos in public venues, which can further show effectiveness of our model in real scenarios.
@cite_12 the likely behaviours of train passengers in an emergency evacuation are explored in the form of questionnaires. The results showed that respondents are more likely to be reactive (e.g., wait for instruction from station staff) rather than proactive (e.g., move to exit); more likely to be cooperative (e.g., helping other people) than competitive (e.g., push other passengers); more likely to show herding or symmetry behaviour (e.g., following other passengers) than symmetric breaking behaviour (e.g., choose least crowded exit); and less likely to use the lifts, escalators and tunnels to escape in an emergency situation. In terms of demographic differences in behaviours, it's demonstrated that there are significant differences in the evacuation behaviours between males and females. Males are less likely to use emergency call buttons, call the emergency phone number or wait at the assembly area. Also, they are more likely to display competitive behaviour, choose the least crowded exit, and use the lifts, escalators and tunnels to escape in the event of an emergency evacuation. In contrast, differences in behaviours are not as obvious among different age groups.
@cite_12
2486010654 2345063721 2020276315 127470283
Abstract This paper explores the likely behaviours of train passengers in an emergency evacuation and examines four crucial theoretical issues on the passengers’ evacuation, including reactive vs. proactive behaviours, cooperative vs. competitive behaviours, symmetry breaking, and route exit choice. A survey of 1134 train passengers shows that respondents are not homogeneous in their likely behaviours. Overall, they are more likely to be reactive (e.g., wait for instruction from station staff) than proactive (e.g., move to exit) in an emergency situation. We also find that people are more likely to be co-operative (e.g., helping other people) than competitive (e.g., push other passengers). Although passengers are likely to show herding or symmetry breaking behaviour (e.g., following other passengers) than symmetric behaviour (e.g., choose least crowded exit), the degree of symmetry breaking behaviour is not as high as assumed in previous mathematical models. They are also unlikely to use escalators, lifts and train tunnels in their exit route choice during an emergency escape. In terms of demographic differences in behaviours, results from the ordered logit models demonstrate that there are significant differences in the evacuation behaviours between males and females but not among the different age groups. Besides providing valuable information for developing mathematical models intended to simulate passengers’ evacuation in a train station, our findings can assist managers of emergency response in developing appropriate strategies and training, and in designing solutions and education campaigns for effective evacuation. Emergency evacuation from airports is an important consideration given the continuing occurrence of both natural and human caused disasters. Unfortunately, the traditional evacuation-drill approach to prepare for emergency situations presents several practical challenges at the scale and magnitude required for airports. In this paper, we present an agent-based model (ABM) called exitus which is capable of determining the extent to which collective behavior and overall evacuation time of passenger groups is affected by changes in the built environment for large, complex structures. The model is unique because it explicitly considers the physical and psychological characteristics of individuals with disabilities. In our first experiment, several bomb simulation scenarios were conducted at an international airport using exitus. Several important findings were revealed including: 1) the importance of stairway and exit configurations; 2) the inherent weaknesses of the pier airport design in affecting timely evacuations; 3) who the most vulnerable groups of people are; 4) the particular risk engendered from crowded or complex building interiors for individuals with disabilities; and 5) the potential problems caused by locating explosive detection system machines near passenger processing areas. The results of a second exploratory experiment also revealed the importance of realistically modeling psychological attributes of individuals with disabilities and their potential impact on collective evacuation performance. Overall the findings demonstrated the model’s ability to generate a common operational picture capable of guiding preparedness efforts for both public and private organizations encompassing a wide variety of professional endeavor. Metro construction in China enjoyed and will continue to enjoy unprecedented development in the tenth 5 Year Plan period and the upcoming eleventh 5 Year Plan period. In China, cities are densely populated, and as a modernized urban rail transit means, metros have been undertaking increasingly important tasks of large passenger flow transportation, under which circumstance the injury and casualty will be enormous if an accident occurs. China's work safe laws and regulations have stipulated that safety evaluation must be carried out during planning, design, construction and operation of metros. As a part of the metro safety evaluation, occupant safe evacuation is a critical aspect to be assessed. This paper will first introduce the occupants evacuation design in the construction of metros in China based on Code for design of metro (CFDOM) (GB 50157-2003), including evacuation passage design, evacuation time and evacuation safe area as well as fire-engineering-based occupants evacuation design philosophy and calculation method. Finally, a computer simulation of the process of evacuation of occupants from deep buried metro station (DBMS) by using occupants evacuation dynamic model will be conducted on the example of DBMS of Guangzhou Metro Line 6, so as to study whether the occupants can be safely evacuated from DBMS in case of fire. Starting with a short review of the available literature in the field of pedestrian and evacuation research, an overview is given over the observed collective phenomena in pedestrian crowds. This includes lane formation in corridors and oscillations at bottlenecks in normal situations, while different kinds of blocked states are produced in panic situations. By means of molecular-dynamic-like microsimulations based on a generalized force model of interactive pedestrian dynamics, the spatio-temporal patterns in pedestrian crowds are successfully reproduced and interpreted as self-organized phenomena. In contrast to previous socio-psychological approaches, this allows a physical understanding of the observations. Despite the significantly different phenomena occuring in normal and panic situations, the main effects can be described by a unified model containing only well interpretable and plausible terms. The transition between the “rational” normal behavior and the apparently “irrational” panic behavior is controlled by a single parameter, the “nervousness”, which influences fluctuation strengths, desired speeds, and the tendency of herding. Thereby, it causes paradoxial effects like “freezing by heating”, “faster is slower”, and the ignorance of available exits. Nevertheless, there are measures to improve pedestrian flows, both in normal and panic situations. For example, the suitable placement of columns can help, although they reduce the accessible space.