An extended model for describing pedestrian evacuation under the threat of artificial attack

• Published in: Physics letters. A 2018-09, Vol.382 (35), p.2445-2454
• Main Authors: Chen, Changkun, Tong, Yunhe, Shi, Congling, Qin, Wenlong
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Artificial attack; Evacuation behavior; Floor field model; Pedestrian density
• ISSN: 0375-9601; 1873-2429
• DOI: 10.1016/j.physleta.2018.06.007

An extended floor field model was proposed to investigate evacuation behaviors of pedestrians under the threat of artificial attack. In this model, pedestrian movement governed by the static and dynamic floor field, and the motion and assault of artificial attacker were involved simultaneously. Further, injuries with lower velocity and deaths of pedestrians caused by the attacker during evacuation were considered. And a new parameter kt was introduced. It is the sensitivity coefficient of attack threat floor field and could reflect quantitatively the extent of effect of attack threat on the decision-making of the individual. Moreover, effects of several key parameters such as the sensitivity coefficient, assault intensity and pedestrian density on evacuation dynamics were studied. Results show that pedestrian evacuation would display interesting phenomena transiting from rolling behavior to along-the-wall motion with aggravating extent of the impact of attackers on pedestrians, which refers kt in the model varying from 0.5 to 0.8. As assault intensity increases, more casualties would be caused and the available evacuation time would decrease, which means people have to flee the room in a shorter time period for survival. When the pedestrian density increases, more clogging at the exit would be generated and pedestrians would be more difficult to evacuate due to the limited capacity of egress and the reduction in the average speed of pedestrian flow caused by the injured. And the injured with limited motion capacity could hardly complete the evacuation owing to that they need more evacuation time and would retard the speed of the pedestrian flow. •An extended floor-field model considering the artificial attack threat was proposed.•Injuries with lower velocity and deaths of pedestrians caused by the attacker were considered.•Rolling behavior and along-the-wall motion during evacuation were observed.•Effects of assault intensity and pedestrian density on evacuation dynamics were obtained.