Optimizing Crowd Evacuation: Evaluation of Strategies for Safety and Efficiency

From the paper

Abstract

Abstract Predicting and controlling crowd dynamics in emergencies is one of the main objectives of simulated emergency exercises. However, during emergency exercises, there is often a lack of sense of danger by the actors involved and concerns about exposing real people to potentially dangerous environments. These problems impose limitations in running an emergency drill, harming the collection of valuable information for posterior analysis and decision-making. This work aims to mitigate these problems by using \gls{abm} simulator to deepen the comprehension of human actions when exposed to a sudden variation in extensive crowded environmental conditions and how evacuation strategies affect evacuation performance. To assess the impact of the evacuation strategy, we propose a modified informed leader-flowing approach and compare it with common evacuation strategies in a simulated environment to replicate typical stadium benches with narrow corridors leading to different exit points. The emergency is triggered when one or more fire erupts on the bench, leading to a sudden behaviour change, with people trying to find their way out quickly. The objective is to determine the impact of each set of configurations and evacuation strategies. Our experiments determined that agents following the leader with vital real-time information achieved lower fatality counts and exit times in all evaluation scenarios, proving that relevant and controlled information is crucial in an emergency evacuation scenario.