Abstract
The automatic flap barrier gate system (AFBGS) plays a critical role in building security, but it is more vulnerable to natural hazards than common exits (including power failure, due to earthquakes, and delayed evacuation, due to safety certification, etc.). This article considers a dynamic decision-making process of evacuees during post-earthquake evacuation near an AFBGS. An interesting metaphor, broken windows (BW), is utilized to interpret people’s actual behavior during evacuation. A multi-stage decision-making mechanism of evacuees is developed to characterize the instantaneous transition among three defined stages: Habitual, mild, and radical states. Then, we build a modified three-layer social force model to reproduce the interaction between evacuees based on an actual post-earthquake evacuation. The simulations reveal that BW provides a contextualized understanding of emergency evacuation with a similar effect to the traditional metaphor. An earlier appearance of a mild rule breaker leads to a higher crowd evacuation efficiency. If evacuees maintain the state of broken windows behavior (BWB), the crowd evacuation efficiency can be improved significantly. Contrary to the criminological interpretation, the overall effect of mild BWB is positive, but the radical BWB is encouraged under the command of guiders.
Highlights
Accepted: 31 July 2021The transport infrastructure in congested regions often presents a vulnerability under natural disasters, such as an earthquake, fire, hurricane, etc
As an automatic multi-exit solution for metro stations, stadiums, universities, and commercial buildings, the automatic flap barrier gate system (AFBGS) is more vulnerable to hazards than common exits
Speaking, the first broken windows behavior (BWB) [37] refers to the trigger that changes the original state of the crowd
Summary
The transport infrastructure in congested regions often presents a vulnerability under natural disasters, such as an earthquake, fire, hurricane, etc. But serious, natural disaster, earthquakes principally result in shaking, ground rupture, structure collapse, etc., and destroy the stability of transport systems [1]. Many incidents with serious consequences occurred near extremely crowded areas, such as exits. As an automatic multi-exit solution for metro stations, stadiums, universities, and commercial buildings, the automatic flap barrier gate system (AFBGS) is more vulnerable to hazards than common exits (e.g., a power outage caused by structural damage, time delay, due to access control, etc.). Post-incident analysis of the exit choice revealed that pedestrians attempted to evacuate through the same exit, ignoring less crowded points of egress during an emergency evacuation [2,3]. In addition to the characteristics of evacuees near common exits, a more complex and stepped decision-making process is witnessed near an AFBGS and has attracted considerable attention
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