Simulation modelling is a necessary tool to analyse pedestrian movement behaviour in order to predict the social and collective behaviour in different situations. Psychological aspects of human behaviour in interacting with the environment is the critical point in the pedestrian simulation context. The affordance theory originated from psychology and humanities is a key concept to address this issue and model the relationship between an agent and his/her environment. This study aims to introduce a prototype of an agent-based model using the affordance concept to simulate the decision-making process during an evacuation. The proposed approach was tested to model the behaviour of evacuees in a platform of a subway station through both normal and emergencies. The results of the test including the evacuation time and flows toward different scenarios, showed that the model can work properly. The proposed approach can yield a useful tool for designers to mention pedestrian movement behaviour in their building designs.

Agent-Based Simulation for Pedestrian Evacuation Behaviour Using the Affordance Concept

Simulation-based passenger evacuation optimization in metro stations considering multi-objectives

Adaptive multi-objective optimization for emergency evacuation at metro stations

Timely and secure evacuation of residents during flood disasters or other emergency events is an important issue in urban community flood risk management, especially in vulnerable communities. An agent-based modeling framework was proposed in order to indicate how the community properties (e.g., community density and percentage of vulnerable residents), residents' psychological attributes (e.g., flood risk tolerance threshold) and mutual aid mechanism affect the flood evacuation process. Results indicated that: (1) The community density negatively affected the flood evacuation efficiency. The greater the density of the community, the longer the evacuation time. (2) There was a negative correlation between the flood risk tolerance threshold of residents and evacuation efficiency. (3) The proportion of vulnerable resident agents had opposite effects on the evacuation efficiency of different types of communities, which was to negatively affect low-density communities and positively affect high-density communities. (4) Mutual aid mechanism can reduce evacuation time in low-density communities, and the effect was more pronounced with a higher proportion of vulnerable resident agents in the community. These findings can help managers to develop better emergency evacuation management for urban communities.

https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/2/560/pdf

Analysis of Flood Evacuation Process in Vulnerable Community with Mutual Aid Mechanism: An Agent-Based Simulation Framework.

The onset of the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV2 has changed many aspects of people’s economic and social activities. For many airlines, social distancing has reduced airplane capacity by one third as a result of keeping the middle seats empty. Additionally, social distancing between passengers traversing the aisle slows the boarding process. Recent literature has suggested that the reverse pyramid boarding method provides favorable values for boarding time and passenger health metrics when compared to other boarding methods with social distancing. Assuming reverse pyramid boarding with the middle seats unoccupied, we determined the number of passengers to include in each of three boarding groups. We assumed that passengers use a jet-bridge that connects the airport terminal to the airplane’s front door. We used agent-based modeling and a stochastic simulation to evaluate solutions. A full grid search found an initial good solution, and then local search optimization determined the best solution based upon the airline’s relative preference for minimizing average boarding time and minimizing risks to previously seated passengers from later-boarding, potentially contagious passengers breathing near them. The resulting solution contained the number of passengers to place into each of the three boarding groups. If an airline is most concerned about the health risk to seated passengers from later boarding passengers walking near them, the best three-group reverse pyramid method adapted for social distancing will first board passengers with window seats in the rear half of the airplane, then will board passengers with window seats in the front half of the airplane and those with aisle seats in the rear half of the airplane, and finally will board the passengers with aisle seats in the front half of the airplane. The resulting solution takes about 2% longer to board than the three-group solution that minimizes boarding time while providing a 25% decrease in health risk to aisle seat passengers from later boarding passengers.

https://www.mdpi.com/2073-8994/12/12/2038/pdf

Determining the Number of Passengers for Each of Three Reverse Pyramid Boarding Groups with COVID-19 Flying Restrictions

With many people using subways at the same time, subway stations must be appropriately designed to allow people to move smoothly and safely during daily operation and emergency evacuation. The pres...

Daniel S. Fernandes

Papers

Agent-based evacuation simulation from subway train and platform