Cellular automaton model for evacuation process with obstacles

Varas, A.; Cornejo, MD; Mainemer D.; Toledo, B; Rogan, J.; Muñoz, V; Valdivia JA

Abstract

A bidimensional cellular automaton model is used to simulate the process of evacuation of pedestrians in a room with fixed obstacles. A floor field is defined so that moving to a cell with lower floor field means approaching an exit door. The model becomes non-deterministic by introducing a "panic" parameter, given by a probability of not moving, and by a random choice to resolve conflicts in the update of pedestrian positions. Two types of exit doors are considered: single (where only one person can pass) and double (two persons can pass simultaneously). For a double door, the longest evacuation time turns out to occur for a very traditional location of the door. The optimum door position is determined. Replacing the double door by two single doors does not improve evacuation times noticeably. On the other hand, for a room without obstacles, a simple scaling law is proposed to model the dependence of evacuation time with the number of persons and exit width. This model fails when obstacles are present, as their presence introduces local bottlenecks whose effect outweighs the benefits of increasing door width beyond a certain threshold. © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Más información

Título según WOS: Cellular automaton model for evacuation process with obstacles
Título según SCOPUS: Cellular automaton model for evacuation process with obstacles
Título de la Revista: PHYSICA A-STATISTICAL MECHANICS AND ITS APPLICATIONS
Volumen: 382
Número: 2
Editorial: ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV
Fecha de publicación: 2007
Página de inicio: 631
Página final: 642
Idioma: English
URL: http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0378437107003676
DOI:

10.1016/j.physa.2007.04.006

Notas: ISI, SCOPUS