Tie-Qiao Tang

Modeling pedestrian flow accounting for collision avoidance during evacuation

Abstract Collision avoidance behavior has become an open challenging problem since it is one of critical factors that influence the pedestrian flow dynamics. In this paper, a cellular automaton (CA) model is developed to depict the pedestrian movements when collision avoidance behaviors exist during evacuation. Then, we utilize the proposed model to simulate the influences of the collision avoidance on the pedestrian movements during the evacuation in a classroom with two exits. The numerical results indicate that more collision avoidance behaviors have negative influences on the evacuation efficiency, and that more competition behaviors generate more collisions while have no prominent positive impacts on the evacuation efficiency. Moreover, the evacuation time increases with the decreasing number of aisles in the classroom and the number of collisions increases with the increasing number of parts in the classroom divided by aisles. The above results are helpful to develop effective evacuation strategies and design the internal layouts of buildings.

Modeling Passengers’ Boarding Behavior at the Platform of High Speed Railway Station

Modeling passengers’ motion at high speed railway (HSR) station has been a hot topic in the field of pedestrian flow theory. However, little effort has been made to explore the passengers’ boarding behaviors at the platform of HSR station. This study proposes a cellular automaton (CA) model to study the passengers’ boarding behavior at the platform of HSR station. Some numerical tests are conducted to explore the passengers’ movements and the complex traffic phenomena (e.g., each passenger’s trajectory, congestion, and travel time) which occur during the boarding process. The numerical results illustrate that the passengers’ inflow rate and entrance choice behavior have significant impacts on the boarding efficiency. These results can help managers to understand the passengers’ boarding behavior and to improve the boarding efficiency.

Child behavior during evacuation under non-emergency situations: Experimental and simulation results

Abstract Child behavior during evacuation, as a critical problem that has not been fully explored and understood, is investigated in this paper, through conducting a group of experiments and developing a cellular automaton (CA) model. The video recordings have revealed several typical patterns of child behavior related to distance, obstacle and congestion level. The group behavior, as well as the waiting and playing behavior in a group, have been observed. Then, a CA model is proposed to describe the movement of children with and without group behavior. Through numerical simulations, the ability of the model to reproduce the behavior observed in the experiments is verified. The results also show that the child group behavior has significant negative effect on evacuation time. This study helps to improve the evacuation strategy for children, the internal layout and exit arrangement for buildings where many children congregate.