A Fuzzy-Theory-Based Cellular Automata Model for Pedestrian Evacuation From a Multiple-Exit Room

Abstract

The exit selection behavior of pedestrians plays an important part in the process of evacuation. This paper proposes a cellular automata model based on fuzzy logic method for simulating the evacuation of pedestrians from a multiple-exit room. When pedestrians select the exit, the distance and density are adopted as two important input variables in the fuzzy logic method, and the probability of selecting each exit is defined as the output variable of fuzzy logic method. The output variable of fuzzy logic, exit width and herding behavior are combined to determine the target exit. The competitiveness of each pedestrian is calculated by logit model to solve the position conflicts among pedestrians. The validation of the model is demonstrated by comparing the simulation data with the real data. The effects of attributes of pedestrians, exits and obstacles on evacuation are studied in simulations. Results show that large public facilities should control the inflows of pedestrians, and the reasonable increase of the exit quantity and exit width are effective for improving the evacuation efficiency. In the design of buildings, obstacles need to be designed reasonably, which should not be too large or too small. At the same time, obstacles should be kept at a certain distance from the exit, so as to ease the exit congestion and improve the evacuation efficiency. This paper takes the advantages of fuzzy logic method to solve the exit selection problem, which can effectively integrate the robustness with physiological-based "perception-action" behavior, the experience knowledge of pedestrians and the perception information of the surrounding environment into the decision-making process. INDEX TERMS Cellular automata model, exit selection, fuzzy logic method, logit model, pedestrian evacuation I. INTRODUCTION

Modelling and Simulating Exit Selection during Assisted Hospital Evacuation Process using Fuzzy Logic and Unity3D

“…For example, Yang et al utilized fuzzy logic to model exit selection using two input parameters: Normalized distance and normalized density [37]. Liu et al followed a similar approach like Yang et al However, they combined the output of the fuzzy logic system with exit width and herding behavior to determine the target exit [38]. Their research demonstrated that the modified multinomial logit model with revising decisions outperforms the other two models [43].…”

Human Behavior During Emergency Evacuation: Cell Transmission Model

“…There are two categories for pedestrian evacuation research, i.e., empirical methods [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13] and simulation methods [14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32]. The results of the experiments can provide the basic data for the prediction of pedestrian evacuation.…”

“…In the simulation process of microscopic model, each pedestrian is regarded as a discrete individual. Typical representatives of the microscopic model are the social force, lattice gas, and cellular automaton models [19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32]. In the social force model, the pedestrians can be considered as structureless particles and the movement is based on Newtonian mechanics.…”

“…Kirchner et al [26,27] suggested the concept of static floor field and dynamic floor field in the cellular automaton model. In addition, a variety of extended cellular automaton models for pedestrian evacuation have been proposed, such as Zheng et al [28], Guo et al [29], Zhao et al [30], Liu et al [31], and Li et al [32].…”

Effect of density control in partially observable asymmetric-exit evacuation under guidance: Strategic suggestion under time delay

“…During the occurred emergency events (such as fire, earthquake, and terrorist attacks), since the pedestrians in the evacuation space are usually myopic and many irrational behaviors may inherently and negatively affect the pedestrians' decision making (which may eventually lead to an efficiency loss causing huge casualties) in the evacuation process [1][2][3][4], some evacuation strategies are often beforehand designed to enhance the evacuation efficiency. In the literature, those evacuation strategies include the choices on room layout [5], number of exits [6], location of obstacles [7], to name but a few. To effectively evaluate the evacuation efficiency, establishing mathematical models describing the pedestrians' decision making behaviors and the resulting phenomena in the evacuation process should be of prime importance [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19].…”