EVAQ

Abstract

Timely crowd evacuation in life-threatening situations such as fire emergency or chemical attack is a significant concern for authorities and first responders. An individual's fate in this situation is dependent on several factors, namely (i) decision dynamics: how egress strategy is selected and executed, (ii) hazard dynamics: how hazards propagate and impair the surrounding environment with time, (iii) environment layout: how space layout effects habitats' lives in emergency evacuation. This paper presents the implementation of EVAQ, a simulation tool developed by the authors in Python for evaluating emergency mapping strategies. Two person-specific egress simulation in fire emergency (an airport terminal and a shopping mall) are presented and results are discussed. Findings confirm that EVAQ can successfully simulate large crowd evacuation by modeling evacuees' personal (i.e., age, gender, disability) and interpersonal (i.e., group interactions) attributes, and situational awareness in a deteriorating environment. Results also show the effectiveness of EVAQ in simulating the impact of the space design (e.g., shape and size of rooms and obstacles, number and width of exits) in crowd evacuation. As personalized sensing and information delivery platforms are becoming more ubiquitous, findings of this work are ultimately sought to assist in developing and executing more robust and adaptive emergency mapping and evacuation plans, ultimately promoting people's lives and wellbeing.