Incorporating Individual Behavior, Knowledge, and Roles in Simulating Evacuation

Emergency evacuation (egress) is an important issue in safety design of facilities and buildings. Studies of past emergency events have highlighted the need to consider occupants’ behaviors for better understanding of evacuation patterns. Occupants’ background and knowledge (such as the level of familiarity with the space and previous experience of emergencies) influence how individuals perceive the emergency situations that in turn can lead to different individual behaviors observed in evacuation. Furthermore, as reported by previous studies, people with special roles, such as staff members and emergency responders, often assume certain responsibilities and extend their roles to assist others and facilitate evacuation. Through simulations of stadium evacuation with 13,200 agents using SAFEgress, we show that the evacuation can be significantly more efficient when occupants possess the knowledge of the floor plan and evacuate from the nearest exit, leading to a shortening of evacuation time of 40%. Furthermore, strategically arranging stewards for crowd control can further enhance egress performance. The simulation study indicates the importance in considering the unique egress design of the venue (such as exit locations and signage), participating occupants’ knowledge of the space, and effective crowd control to achieve optimal egress outcome. By using SAFEgress to model different plausible evacuation behaviors, engineers, designers, and facility managers can evaluate and improve the design of safe egress systems and emergency preparedness planning.