Evacuation dynamics of heterogeneous crowds involving individuals with different types of disabilities

Abstract

In this paper, the movement experiment of mixed disabled group including visual disabilities, hearing disabilities, physical disabilities, mental disabilities, intellectual disabilities and people without disabilities is conducted to analyze the movement characteristics in the corridor. The results show that mental and intellectual disabilities have a higher global velocity than the rest of the crowds. The density range of the mixed disabled group (0.48–2.25 m−2) is narrower than that of the elderly group (0.27–2.64 m−2) in the analysis of fundamental diagram. In the same density range, the differences in velocity and specific flow between two groups are 0.00 ± 0.09 m/s and 0.04 ± 0.11 (m∙s)-1, respectively; the specific flow of the mixed disabled group is increases by (3.84 ± 10.67) % compared to the elderly group. Further analysis shows that evacuation time of the mixed disabled group is inversely proportional to the exit width, the same relationship as for the elderly group, with the curve below that of the elderly group; the flow of the mixed disabled group is greater than that of the elderly group. The spatial distribution of nearest neighbor for the mixed disabled group presents an elliptical shape; with increasing density, the shape of the spatial distribution tends to be circular. For wheelchair users and other crowds, the area of the nearest neighbor spatial distribution decreases as the exit width decreases. However, the area of wheelchair users is larger than that of other crowds. The findings of this study are hoped to be a guide for pedestrian safety management and engineering egress design.