Cellular Automata Modelling of the Movement of People with Disabilities during Building Evacuation

This study deals with the evacuation of areas that involve people with disabilities. A crowd evacuation model has been developed using the Cellular Automata (CA) parallel computing tool. This model is capable of simulating and evaluating human behavior and special features that exist when people with disabilities are included in the process of evacuation. During the experimental process, the model simulates the evacuation of a secondary school for disabled children in the prefecture of Xanthi. After attendance and observation of an earthquake safety exercise organized by this school, the total evacuation time is recorded. At the end of this study, the developed model is validated on the basis of actual data and useful conclusions are drawn for the specific application area. In addition, with the modification of the original data, the model is applicable to every building case.