An Improved Simulation Model for Pedestrian Crowd Evacuation

Danial A Muhammed,Polla Fattah,Indradip Banerjee,Nebojsa Bacanin,Tarik A Rashid,Abeer Alsadoon,Mokhtar Mohammadi

doi:10.3390/math8122171

Abstract

This paper works on one of the most recent pedestrian crowd evacuation models—i.e., “a simulation model for pedestrian crowd evacuation based on various AI techniques”—which was developed in late 2019. This study adds a new feature to the developed model by proposing a new method and integrating it into the model. This method enables the developed model to find a more appropriate evacuation area design regarding safety due to selecting the best exit door location among many suggested locations. This method is completely dependent on the selected model’s output—i.e., the evacuation time for each individual within the evacuation process. The new method finds an average of the evacuees’ evacuation times of each exit door location; then, based on the average evacuation time, it decides which exit door location would be the best exit door to be used for evacuation by the evacuees. To validate the method, various designs for the evacuation area with various written scenarios were used. The results showed that the model with this new method could predict a proper exit door location among many suggested locations. Lastly, from the results of this research using the integration of this newly proposed method, a new capability for the selected model in terms of safety allowed the right decision in selecting the finest design for the evacuation area among other designs.

Highlights

Population size is intensely increasing, demand for space is inevitable, and new styles of buildings are built extensively due to the quick advancement in economics and its continuity [1,2].The various structures of these buildings affect the duration of evacuation within the evacuation process [3]
In the last two decades, regarding the limitations of using homogeneous people in various simulation models [8], there have been some simulation models proposed for evacuation, such as Simulex [9], BGRAF is acyually a simulation model [10], and Exodus [11]
Since the developed model worked on the area of a cafeteria and sufficient data were collected about the individuals that participated in the evacuation process and analyzed, this research studied the same area and used the same data of the selected model; interested readers can look at this paper [12]

Summary

Introduction

Population size is intensely increasing, demand for space is inevitable, and new styles of buildings are built extensively due to the quick advancement in economics and its continuity [1,2].The various structures of these buildings affect the duration of evacuation within the evacuation process [3]. All parties involved, such as residents, governments, and designers, face a problem when an emergency evacuation occurs inside these buildings [2]. In 2019, one of the most recent models for simulating pedestrian crowd evacuation using different AI methods was built, incorporating homogeneous people to simulate the pedestrian evacuation crowd [12]. This new model has a limitation that does not allow the best exit door location to be specified for the evacuation area according to the evacuee’s efficiency

Objectives

Results

Conclusion