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Abstract:
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Panic spreads like a contagious disease among people in a crowd. Any individual closely exposed to a panic source may express his (her) feelings, alerting others of imminent danger. Themore intense these feelings are, the more likely that a neighboring individual move to panic. Thus, a "contagion probability" exists for the panic spreading. The contagion probability plays amajor role in the overall evacuation process. We examined the evacuation dynamics in the context of the "Social Force Model". Our investigation shows that two possible evacuationpatterns may appear, according to the contagion probability level. Both patterns are in agreement with real life recordings from crowded events. We were able to determine the probabilitythreshold for the occurrence of each evacuation pattern. We further investigated how the panic spreading gradually stops if the source of danger ceases.
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