Evacuation simulation considering action of guard in artificial attack**Project supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant No. 2017YFC0804900) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 71790613 and 51534008).

Abstract

To investigate the evacuation behaviors of pedestrians considering the action of guards and to develop an effective evacuation strategy in an artificial attack, an extended floor field model is proposed. In this model, the artificial attacker’s assault on pedestrians, the death of pedestrians, and the guard’s capture are involved simultaneously. An alternative evacuation strategy which can largely reduce the number of casualties is developed and the effects of several key parameters such as the deterrence radius and capture distance on evacuation dynamics are studied. The results show that congestion near the exit has dual effects. More specifically, the guard can catch all attackers in a short time because the artificial attackers have a more concentrated distribution, but more casualties can occur because it is hard for pedestrians to escape the assault due to congestion. In contrast, when pedestrians have more preference of approaching the guard, although the guard will take more time to capture the attackers resulting from the dispersion of the attackers, the death toll will decrease. One of the reasons is the dispersal of the crowd, and the decrease in congestion is beneficial for escape. The other is that the attackers will be caught before launching the attack on the people who are around the guard, in other words, the guard protects a large number of pedestrians from being killed. Moreover, increasing capture distance of the guard can effectively reduce the casualties and the catch time. As the deterrence radius reflecting the tendency of escaping from the guard for attackers rises, it becomes more difficult for the guard to catch the attackers and more casualties are caused. However, when the deterrence radius reaches a certain level, the number of deaths is reduced because the attackers prefer to stay as far away as possible from the guard rather than occupy a position where they could assault more people.