Modeling of Crowd Dynamics With Emergency Signs via Modified Social Force Model

Abstract

The emergency sign system provides evacuation information and route guidance for people and plays an important role in crowd evacuation in case of emergency. This paper investigates crowd dynamics with emergency signs and mainly focuses on the influence of signs on crowd evacuation dynamics under the visual field-limited environment. A modified social force model is proposed by taking into account the evacuation guidance of signs and interaction force between the pedestrians and signs. The effects of quantity and locations of emergency signs and self-organization behavior on evacuation efficiency are explored by simulations. According to the simulation results, the crowd evacuation with emergency signs shows an orderly evacuation process and the evacuation time is reduced significantly compared with that without signs in a smoke-filled room scenario. Moreover, emergency signs with appropriate locations and quantity are more conducive to crowd evacuation. Besides, the herding behavior can also improve the crowd evacuation efficiency.