Study of Human Behavior Before Evacuation

Abstract

Computer simulation is the main method to study evacuation during fire or other disasters. In the evacuation simulation, one of the most important initial parameters is the occupant characteristics, such as the age, gender, education, distribution, accompanied status and pre-movement time. In practice, these parameters are based on assumption and experience. However, due to lack of evacuation and pedestrian data, validation or calibration of evacuation models is still a challenging problem which has not got a good solution. We conducted six unannounced evacuation drills in a lecture hall, and three drills of which are used to discuss the human behavior before evacuation, especially for the pre-movement time. Also, questionnaire survey is conducted to make a qualitative analysis of evacuation behavior. Analyzed and compared with data from three evacuation drills, it comes to results as follows. Firstly, people in different groups respond differently, which results in some difference of pre-movement time. Secondly, according to data from the video information, bimodal distribution of pre-movement time is gotten. Thirdly, analysis by gender identity, pre-movement time of women is shorter than that of men, which could be one of the reasons of bimodal distribution of pre-movement.