Crowd response considering herd effect and exit familiarity under emergent occasions: A case study of an evacuation drill experiment

In order to look into people’s behavior in crowds during emergencies, we conducted an evacuation drill experiment in an office building of a university without early notification when the experiment subjects were working as usual. The statistical features of their evacuation decision-making and exit choices related behaviors were analyzed. Two interesting responses were found in this experiment: 1. People showed herding tendency when deciding to evacuate. 2. People would like to choose the exit that they frequently used to escape because of their daily habits, which is not mentioned in or inconsistent with the most previous research findings. Based on the above findings, an extended cost potential field model considering herd effect and exit familiarity was put forward. The corresponding simulation results showed that the modified model could better describe people’s behavior during emergencies.

[1]  A U Kemloh Wagoum,et al.  Understanding human queuing behaviour at exits: an empirical study , 2017, Royal Society Open Science.

[2]  Quanbin Sun,et al.  Computer Simulation of Leadership, Consensus Decision Making and Collective Behaviour in Humans , 2014, PloS one.

[3]  Weichen Liao,et al.  Route choice in pedestrians: determinants for initial choices and revising decisions , 2017, Journal of The Royal Society Interface.

[4]  Fang Guo,et al.  An extended cost potential field cellular automata model considering behavior variation of pedestrian flow , 2016 .

[5]  Hao Wu,et al.  Experiment and modeling of exit-selecting behaviors during a building evacuation , 2010 .

[6]  Daniel Nilsson,et al.  Evacuation of a Metro Train in an Underground Rail Transportation System: Flow Rate Capacity of Train Exits, Tunnel Walking Speeds and Exit Choice , 2016 .

[7]  B. Gardner,et al.  Promoting habit formation , 2013 .

[8]  Nikolai W. F. Bode,et al.  Human exit route choice in virtual crowd evacuations , 2013, Animal Behaviour.

[9]  Chieh-Hsin Tang,et al.  Using virtual reality to determine how emergency signs facilitate way-finding. , 2009, Applied ergonomics.

[10]  Helbing,et al.  Social force model for pedestrian dynamics. , 1995, Physical review. E, Statistical physics, plasmas, fluids, and related interdisciplinary topics.

[11]  Dirk Helbing,et al.  Simulating dynamical features of escape panic , 2000, Nature.

[12]  F. H. Hankins,et al.  The Psychology of Social Norms , 1937 .

[13]  Xing-Li Li,et al.  An extended cost potential field cellular automaton model for pedestrian evacuation considering the restriction of visual field , 2019, Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications.

[14]  Daniel Nilsson,et al.  Evacuation experiment in a road tunnel: A study of human behaviour and technical installations , 2009 .

[15]  Majid Sarvi,et al.  Following the crowd or avoiding it? Empirical investigation of imitative behaviour in emergency escape of human crowds , 2017, Animal Behaviour.

[16]  Nikolai W F Bode,et al.  Information use by humans during dynamic route choice in virtual crowd evacuations , 2015, Royal Society Open Science.

[17]  Ruggiero Lovreglio,et al.  A study of herding behaviour in exit choice during emergencies based on random utility theory. , 2016 .

[18]  John M. Levine,et al.  Consensus and conformity , 1969 .

[19]  Majid Sarvi,et al.  Human exit choice in crowded built environments: Investigating underlying behavioural differences between normal egress and emergency evacuations , 2016 .

[20]  S. Milgram,et al.  Note on the drawing power of crowds of different size. , 1969 .

[21]  A. J. Batista-Leyva,et al.  Symmetry Breaking in Escaping Ants , 2005, The American Naturalist.

[22]  Zhangang Han,et al.  Symmetry Breaking on Density in Escaping Ants: Experiment and Alarm Pheromone Model , 2014, PloS one.

[23]  Chi-Wang Shu,et al.  Revisiting Hughes’ dynamic continuum model for pedestrian flow and the development of an efficient solution algorithm , 2009 .

[24]  Shaobo Liu,et al.  Evacuation from a classroom considering the occupant density around exits , 2009 .

[25]  Vikas Agrawal,et al.  An agent-based simulation system for concert venue crowd evacuation modeling in the presence of a fire disaster , 2014, Expert Syst. Appl..

[26]  M. Deutsch,et al.  A study of normative and informational social influences upon individual judgement. , 1955, Journal of abnormal psychology.

[27]  S. Asch.  Studies of independence and conformity: I. A minority of one against a unanimous majority. , 1956 .

[28]  R. Zajonc.  Attitudinal effects of mere exposure. , 1968 .

[29]  Max Kinateder,et al.  Exit choice in an emergency evacuation scenario is influenced by exit familiarity and neighbor behavior , 2018, Safety Science.

[30]  A. Schadschneider,et al.  Simulation of pedestrian dynamics using a two dimensional cellular automaton , 2001 .

[31]  Roger L. Hughes,et al.  A continuum theory for the flow of pedestrians , 2002 .

[32]  Scott R. Beach,et al.  Exposure effects in the classroom: The development of affinity among students , 1992 .