An agent-based modeling approach to collaborative classrooms evacuation process

Delcea, Camelia; Cotfas, Liviu‐Adrian; Crăciun, Liliana; Molanescu, Anca Gabriela

doi:10.1016/j.ssci.2019.09.026

Cited by 41 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 53 publications

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“…The model is grid-based and uses a particular type of agent (the patches) in order to represent the environment (desks, chairs, path-ways, obstacles in the classroom or in the lecture hall), while the evacuees are represented using the turtle agents, which possesses a series of individual characteristics. The model is calibrated using a data field extracted from a previous study, both in terms of persons' and environment's characteristics [6].…”

Section: Purposementioning

confidence: 99%

“…System state variables: A time step of 1 tick represents 2.5 s based on [6]. The size of each patch is equivalent to 0.5 m × 0.5 m of ground based on [6]. The environment area is presented in Figure 1.…”

Section: Environmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The speed of each agent depends on its own speed. The value of the speed can be diminished for various periods of time if the agent has other agents in front of it with smaller speeds or it has to overpass a chair section, case in which its speed becomes 0.262 patches/tick [6]. Furthermore, the speed of the agent can reach zero as it is blocked by the flow of agents and has no possibility of changing its coordinates.…”

Section: Process Overview and Schedulingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The initialization is not the same, the place of the agents is randomized for every new simulation. The values for the agents characteristics are also random and generated at the beginning of each simulation, keeping in mind that for the male agents the average speed should be 1.048 patches/tick, while for the female agents it should be of 1.016 patches/tick as reported by [6].…”

Section: Detailsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A series of elements have been considered in the literature related to individuals' behaviors, either in terms of cooperation [1,2] or competition [3], such as, but not limited to: age [4][5][6], social background [7], the degree of familiarity with the environment [8], the degree of selfishness [9], the presence or absence of guidance or authority figures [4,[10][11][12], the occurrence of herd behavior [13], pressure [14,15], emotions [13,16], or by considering different settings of the environment, such as the presence of a single/multiple exit doors [17][18][19], the width of the door [20], the distance to the exit door [21,22], the visibility of the exits [23], the occurrence of different objects [24,25], or limited visibility [26]. The presence of an obstacle in front of an exit has been a controversial and highly studied aspect in the literature.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Investigating the Exits’ Symmetry Impact on the Evacuation Process of Classrooms and Lecture Halls: An Agent-Based Modeling Approach

et al. 2020

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As the evacuation problem has attracted and continues to attract a series of researchers due to its high importance both for saving human lives and for reducing the material losses in such situations, the present paper analyses whether the evacuation doors configuration in the case of classrooms and lecture halls matters in reducing the evacuation time. For this aim, eighteen possible doors configurations have been considered along with five possible placements of desks and chairs. The doors configurations have been divided into symmetrical and asymmetrical clusters based on the two doors positions within the room. An agent-based model has been created in NetLogo which allows a fast configuration of the classrooms and lecture halls in terms of size, number of desks and chairs, desks and chair configuration, exits' size, the presence of fallen objects, type of evacuees and their speed. The model has been used for performing and analyzing various scenarios. Based on these results, it has been observed that, in most cases, the symmetrical doors configurations provide good/optimal results, while only some of the asymmetrical doors configurations provide comparable/better results. The model is configurable and can be used in various scenarios.Symmetry 2020, 12, 627 2 of 25 demonstrated the beneficial effect of such an obstacle, a series of other studies have followed [28], some of them revealing a smaller positive effect [29,30], others stating the influence based on the dimension and position of the obstacle [31], while others proving the ineffectiveness of such a situation [32,33]. In a recent paper, Zuriguel et al. [34] studied the effect of an obstacle placed in front of the exit, and the authors concluded that this situation slightly favors the evacuation of the persons near the wall, prompting a debate on the role of the column in an evacuation process. Even more, the role of the exit location is questioned in Wu et al. [3], in which the authors conduct an experiment using mice and changing the position of the exit door by moving it from the long to the short wall of the test container.Depending on the type of the environment in which the evacuation might take place, a series of studies in the literature have addressed the evacuation of ships [35], metro stations [11,36], metro trains and high-speed trains [37,38], hospitals [39,40], stadiums [41], concert halls [42], supermarkets [43], rooms [34,44], auditorium [45], classrooms and lecture halls [18,46,47], ascending stair evacuation [48], large indoor building spaces [49], large buildings [50], large exterior spaces [51], etc.Among the public building evacuation situations, classrooms and the lecture halls hold an important place, as these spaces generally present a high population density and a restrained evacuation capacity [18,52]. The seat and desk placement among these types of learning rooms can take various forms, which, combined with the exit doors' positions, can have an impact on the overall evacuation time [53]. Furthermore, the complexity of the i...

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Section: Purposementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Environmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Process Overview and Schedulingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Detailsmentioning

confidence: 99%