Simulation of crowd evacuation under attack considering emotion spreading

Abstract

In recent years, attacks against crowded places such as campuses and theaters have frequently and negatively impacted social security and stability. In such an event, the crowd will be subjected to higher psychological stress, and their emotion will spread to others rapidly. This paper establishes the Attack-Evacuation Evacuation Simulation Model (AEES-SFM) based on the social force model to consider emotion spreading under attack. In this model, (1)Attack-Escape Derive Force was considered for the interaction between attackers and evacuees and (2) emotion spreading among the evacuees was considered to modify the value of psychological forces. To validate the simulation, several experiments were carried out in a university in China. Comparing the simulation and experimental results, it is found that the simulation results are similar to the experimental results when considering emotion spreading. Therefore, the AEES-SFM proved to be effective. By comparing the results of the evacuation simulation without emotion spread, the emotion spread model reduces the evacuation time and the number of casualties by about 30%, which is closer to the real experimental results. And the results are still applicable in the case of a 40-person evacuation. This paper provides theoretical support and practical guidance for campus response to violent attacks.