Simulation and modeling of group behavior during emergency evacuation

Abstract

Modeling group behavior is very critical in the context of simulations designed for training personals or evacuation decision making strategies. The behavior of agents in such simulations plays a very important role. Agent behavior in complex environments such as emergency evacuation scenario involves collaboration with other agents. A simple example can be a group of people in a building trying to reach an exit by minimizing their travel time. A further complex situation would be involving several group of people trying to reach multiple exits. This paper describes how complex simulation environments involving group behavior can be constructed by fusing human behavior into the simulation. The developed prototype system is able to demonstrate some emergent human social behaviors, such as competitive, queuing, and herding behaviors.