Evacuation strategies for wrecked pedestrians considering emotional contagion and safety officers

Abstract

Evacuation in shipwrecks remains challenging, and there is a gap in research related to the consideration of emotional changes in pedestrians and the role of safety personnel on passenger ships. The present strategy may be the first work in the dual-model (SIS model and social force model) related research to synthesize the pedestrian's multi-emotional changes and the safety officer's role and movement rules in the shipwreck scenario. We employed a multifactorial two-model approach to enhance the realism of evacuation outcomes during re-sinking scenarios, including pedestrian mood, safety officer, and ship tilt. Our findings reveal critical thresholds for emotion transmission, except for exit width and pedestrian density, where a few people transmitting emotions have minimal effects. Negative emotions beyond a certain threshold can disrupt evacuation and lead to casualties, while positive emotions contribute to smoother evacuations with fewer casualties. Furthermore, optimizing the safety officer's position and action strategy can alleviate the negative feelings of pedestrians and facilitate an orderly evacuation, positively affecting the evacuation outcome, especially in the case of a sinking ship with an increasingly severe angle of inclination. This study provides a valuable framework for improving evacuation safety and minimizing casualties during maritime emergencies.