Panic Evacuation Under Two Different Pedestrian Behaviours

• Activity Number: 538
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Wednesday, August 4, 2010 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Physical and Engineering Sciences
• Author(s): Guillermo Frank* and Claudio Dorso+
• Companies: Universidad de Buenos Aires and Universidad de Buenos Aires
• Keywords: Panic ; Evacuation ; Social Force Model

Abstract

Human evacuation is an important issue in building designs. It has been argued that placing an obstacle in front of the exit door improves the outgoing pedestrian flow by "absorbing" pressure, and consequently, translating clogging effects to an early stage. We examined the statistical behaviour of a panicked crowd in the context of the "social force model", under the hypothesis of two different target selection strategies. In one case (the original one in the social force model) the pedestrians point towards the exit whether it is visible or not. In the other (clever pedestrians) they point towards the first visible openning. Our conclusion is that clever pedestrians are less efficient in evacuating the room.