Pathfinder: An Agent-Based Egress Simulator

Thornton, Charles; O’Konski, Richard; Hardeman, Brian; Swenson, Daniel

doi:10.1007/978-1-4419-9725-8_94

Cited by 26 publications

(16 citation statements)

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“…Pathfinder [36] was selected as a reliable agent-based egress simulator and is a tool that has been used in several fire evacuation studies [37][38][39]. Constraining evacuees (simulated agents in Pathfinder) to take particular exit routes was used as a proxy to model the delivery and following of customised evacuation instructions to actual evacuees.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Customising Evacuation Instructions for High-Rise Residential Occupants to Expedite Fire Egress: Results from Agent-Based Simulation

Gerges

Demian

Adamu

2021

Fire

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As the possibility of safe escape is one of the most crucial aspects of a building’s fire safety features, understanding of human behaviour under fire conditions is important for a successful evacuation. Although most of today’s buildings are equipped with fire safety systems, a fire can still occur at anytime and anywhere in a building and have devastating consequences. In the last decade, researchers and practitioners have used information technology to assist with fire safety design and emergency management. Building Information Modelling (BIM) is an exemplar process whose underpinning digital technology has been helpful for fire safety design, simulation, and analysis, but there is a lack of research on how BIM-based models combined with agent-based simulations can help improve evacuation via effective navigation and wayfinding in high-rise residential buildings. Customising evacuation instructions based on BIM, simulation results and occupant location, and delivery of these bespoke instructions to occupants’ smartphones during a fire emergency is relatively novel and research is needed to realise the potential of this approach. Therefore, this study investigates how customised evacuation instructions delivered to each occupant in a high-rise residential building could result in a faster evacuation during a fire incident. The research adopted a case study building and used Pathfinder (agent-based evacuation simulation software) to simulate evacuation from this eleven-floor high-rise residential building in Cairo, Egypt. Constraining evacuees (simulated agents in Pathfinder) to take particular exit routes was used as a proxy for delivering customised evacuation instructions to actual evacuees. Simulation results show that, in general, allowing the use of lifts for the benefit of disabled occupants could lead to their misuse by able-bodied occupants; evacuees would attempt to use the first visible point of exit regardless of how crowded it is. With optimally customised instructions, the evacuation time was, on average, 17.6 min (almost 50%) shorter than when the occupant’s choice of egress route was simulated based on standard path planning factors such as route length, nearby crowds and visible hazards. With evacuation instructions sent via smartphones, occupants could exit more rapidly via alternative routes. Such bespoke instructions were shown to reduce the adverse effects of crowdedness and uneven distribution of occupants along vertical and horizontal evacuation routes on evacuation time.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Customising Evacuation Instructions for High-Rise Residential Occupants to Expedite Fire Egress: Results from Agent-Based Simulation

Gerges

Demian

Adamu

2021

Fire

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“…The steering mode is an agent-based model which is following Reynold's steering behaviour model [27] and refined by Amor et al [28]. The passengers were set as an autonomous agent with different characteristics such as age, moving speed and pre-movement time [29]. In the steering mode, Pathfinder uses a combination of steering and collision handling mechanisms to control how the passengers achieve their goal in an emergency situation.…”

Section: Model Basismentioning

confidence: 99%

Influence of Evacuation Walkway Design Parameters on Passenger Evacuation Time along Elevated Rail Transit Lines Using a Multi-Agent Simulation

et al. 2019

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Passenger evacuation on elevated railway lines has always been an important issue for elevated rail transit safety management, because it is challenging to evacuate passengers efficiently in the event of man-made calamities and natural disasters. Therefore, an evacuation walkway has been designed as a primary solution to assist passenger evacuation during an emergency on elevated rail transit lines. However, investigations on how evacuation walkway designs influence passenger evacuation time are still limited. This study established two evacuation scenarios of interval evacuation on elevated rail transit lines and put forward a new evacuation time measurement method, based on the concept of ‘evacuation time for passengers leaving the evacuation walkway risk zone’. Then, the evacuation time for 90 combinations of entrance widths and walkway widths was simulated by a multi-agent evacuation simulator, Pathfinder, considering 1032 passengers being evacuated both unidirectionally and bidirectionally. The results show that the entrance width and walkway width have a combined effect on passenger evacuation time. An increase in the walkway width from 0.7 m to 1.5 m may potentially reduce the evacuation time by 54.5% in unidirectional evacuation, and 35.2% in bidirectional evacuation. An increase in the entrance width results in a noticeable evacuation time fluctuation when the walkway width is 0.7 and 0.8 m for both evacuation scenarios, while in a bidirectional evacuation, a noticeable fluctuation also can be observed when the walkway width is within the range of 1.4–1.5 m. According to the study, a potentially good design parameter combination for a newly built evacuation walkway is 1.3 m and 1.4 m for the walkway width and entrance width, respectively. The findings from this study may provide a useful reference in the optimization of the design of evacuation facilities and improvement of passenger evacuation safety in rail transit systems.

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“…Here we describe the comparison analysis between EvacTunnel and other current evacuation models: STEPS [11], Pathfinder [19] and GridFlow [20]. The comparison is performed for the self-evacuation of people trapped inside the tunnel.…”

Section: Comparison With Steps Pathfinder and Gridflowmentioning

confidence: 99%

Real-time Stochastic Evacuation Models for Decision Support in Actual Emergencies

Cuesta¹,

Alvear²,

Abreu³

et al. 2014

Fire Saf. Sci.

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This paper introduces and proposes the use of evacuation models for decision support during actual emergencies. Two examples are presented: EvacTrain 2.0 and EvacTunnel. The proposed models are essentially stochastic, quick and easy to use and can generate and process results of several simulations within a few seconds. The main output parameter is the percentile (0.90, 0.95 or 0.99 th) of total evacuation times. They also provide other statistical characteristics and additional outputs. Both models have been compared with other validated evacuation models. Results suggest that the proposed models provide consistent and reliable results. The general findings described in this paper suggest that it is possible to develop efficient evacuation models for supporting emergency decisions in real-time.

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Pathfinder: An Agent-Based Egress Simulator

Cited by 26 publications

References 0 publications

Customising Evacuation Instructions for High-Rise Residential Occupants to Expedite Fire Egress: Results from Agent-Based Simulation

Customising Evacuation Instructions for High-Rise Residential Occupants to Expedite Fire Egress: Results from Agent-Based Simulation

Influence of Evacuation Walkway Design Parameters on Passenger Evacuation Time along Elevated Rail Transit Lines Using a Multi-Agent Simulation

Real-time Stochastic Evacuation Models for Decision Support in Actual Emergencies

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