Fine Grid-Based Crowd Evacuation Simulation in Airport Terminal

Abstract

The airport terminal is a large crowded place, and its internal safety and security have become major problem of public safety in China. Different from previous method of contingency planning and disaster escaping time estimating, this paper adopts fine grid-based spatial region description method in view of the characteristics of terminal space that divides the space into uniform mesh (minimum cell size is 10cm × 10cm ), builds pedestrian behavior model using the potential field technology (by the interaction of destination function and obstacle function ), and thereby establishes the crowd evacuation simulation software prototype. The program was developed using Visual C++ under Microsoft Visual Studio environment, which implements the configuration of population distribution characteristics and simulation results display. A scenario was selected from a local active region in terminal; the crowd evacuation process simulated; and the evacuation time, space utilization, and other information of the region obtained. Through the example of simulation, the authors can see the influence of outlet size on the evacuation time, and the importance of the evacuation path to pedestrians. This study can provide a quantitative model support for large terminal building emergency management work, which has certain theory significance and practical value for personnel safety and security in the event of an emergency such as terrorist attack, fire, or earthquake.