Experiment, model, and simulation of the pedestrian flow around a training school classroom during the after-class period

Abstract

In China, training schools are ubiquitous, where heterogeneous pedestrian flow (which consists of adults and children) widely occurs during the after-class period. In this paper, we develop a fine grid cellular CA model to describe the pedestrian behaviors (e.g., pick-up behavior, searching behavior, matching behavior, waiting behavior, leading behavior, and following behavior) at a training school during the after-class period and explore the effects of the special behaviors on each pedestrian’s movement in and around a classroom. To describe the heterogeneous pedestrian flow accurately, (i) some questionnaire surveys are designed to extract some features of adult’s and child’s movement, and (ii) some video experiments are conducted to estimate/calibrate some parameters of interest in the proposed model. Finally, some strategies are designed to enhance the evacuation efficiency and the operational efficiency of training school. The numerical results indicate that the proposed model can reasonably match with reality, and the proposed strategies can enhance the evacuation efficiency and the operational efficiency of training school. The results can help the administrators to effectively manage the pedestrian evacuation at training school during the after-class period.

The role of crowd behavior and cooperation strategies during evacuation

“…In modeling and simulating evacuation scenarios, it is essential to take account of the crowd’s behavior and diverse emergency scenarios as pointed out by Wirz et al 38 Examples of several recent research works on diverse emergency evacuation scenarios are featured such as in metro station, 13 terminal apron, 39 training school, 40 and also during dense crowd. 41 Xie et al 13 proposed a stabilized coupled model of agent behavior and computational fluid dynamics model for effectiveness investigation of the fire evacuation in a metro station.…”

“…The proposed work was effective in solving the rezoning of the Roll-on/Roll-off/ Passenger (Ro-Pax) terminal apron and the results showed that rational traffic organization and refined arrangement in the terminal apron can reduce the traffic hazards effectively. Xie et al 40 developed a fine grid cellular CA model to describe the pedestrian behaviors specifically adult–child behaviors and movement in the corridor during after-class periods at training schools. Hesham and Wainer 41 proposed a model based on centroidal particle dynamics considering the pedestrians’ close-range interactions in dense crowds.…”

“…33 Related research of evacuation modeling and simulation which implements different aspects of game theory such as a spatial game in describing risky agents is proposed by Pa ¨rna ¨nen, 10 game theory cost function modeled using distance to the exit and number of agents is proposed by Tian et al, 33 game theory for room evacuation via lattice gas scheme can be found in Bouzat and Kuperman's study, 34 game theory via a CA environment to study patient and impatient agents are presented by Helio ¨vaara et al, 35 von Schantz and Ehtamo, 36 while game theory to study the effect of obstacle removal during evacuation is presented by Lin and Wong. 37 In modeling and simulating evacuation scenarios, it is essential to take account of the crowd's behavior and diverse emergency scenarios as pointed out by Wirz et al 38 Examples of several recent research works on diverse emergency evacuation scenarios are featured such as in metro station, 13 terminal apron, 39 training school, 40 and also during dense crowd. 41 Xie et al 13 proposed a stabilized coupled model of agent behavior and computational fluid dynamics model for effectiveness investigation of the fire evacuation in a metro station.…”

A kinetic theory model of human crowds accounting for visual attention

“…Congestion is quite common and has attracted the attention of many researchers. Specifically, the impacts of different factors, including the locations of exits, 2 the internal layout of the system, 3 short-range collision avoidance, 4 pedestrian age, 5 an imbalanced initial layout of pedestrians, 6 and the kinship effect, 7 on congestion evacuation have been explored. However, these studies did not consider the impact of pedestrians’ visual attention-shifting behavior on congestion.…”

Metro station evacuation safety assessment considering emergency response

“…pick-up behavior, searching behavior, matching behavior, waiting behavior, leading behavior, and following behavior) at a training school during the after-class period was developed. 12 In terms of safety design and management of subway stations, researchers have proposed several engineering design and hand calculation methods for fire evacuation scenarios. [13][14][15] The emergency resource allocation and emergency response time were analyzed with a Petri net-based approach.…”