An Agent-Based Model of Crowd Evacuation: Combining Individual, Social and Technological Aspects

Abstract

Development of crowd evacuation systems is a challenge due to involvement of complex interrelated aspects, diversity of involved individuals and/or environment, and lack of direct evidence. Evacuation modeling and simulation is used to analyze various possible outcomes as different scenarios unfold, typically when the complexity of scenario is high. However, incorporation of different aspect categories in a unified modeling space is a challenge. In this paper, we addressed this challenge by combining individual, social and technological models of people during evacuation, while pivoting all these aspects on a common agent-based modeling framework and a grid-based hypothetical environment. By simulating these models, an insight into the effectiveness of several interesting evacuation scenarios is provided. Based on the simulation results, a couple of useful recommendations are also given. The most important recommendation is not to use potential field indicating the exits dynamics as an exit strategy particularly for a spatial complexity environment.