Evacuation characteristics of preschool children through bottlenecks

Pedestrian movement through bottlenecks have been widely studied from various aspects to understand the effects of bottlenecks on the pedestrian flow. However, few attentions have been paid to the movement characteristics of preschool children, who show obvious differences behaviour compared to adults due to the poor balance and understanding of danger especial under emergencies. In this study, we focus on the evacuation characteristics of preschool children through bottlenecks with laboratory experiments. From all the experiment, we do not observe clear lane formation process from the trajectories diagrams. It is found that the first arrive first out principle does not work in the situation with competition. Compared to adults, children are more likely to fall and hard to be controlled during movement, which is very dangerous in emergencies. The highest speed for the preschool children can beyond 3 m/s and is depend on the location in the crowd for each individual. For a given number of evacuees, the total evacuation time firstly decreases a linear with the increasing the bottleneck width and then keeps a constant if nobody falls down during the movement. Falling down of children will increase the evacuation time incredibly. The findings will be beneficial for the evacuation drill design in kindergarten as well as the facility design for young children.

[1]  Liya Yao,et al.  A comparative study of funnel shape bottlenecks in subway stations , 2017 .

[3]  Armin Seyfried,et al.  Experimental Study on Pedestrian Flow through Wide Bottleneck , 2014 .

[4]  Angel Garcimartín,et al.  Flow of pedestrians through narrow doors with different competitiveness , 2016 .

[5]  S. Gwynne,et al.  The collection and compilation of school evacuation data for model use , 2016 .

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

[7]  Armin Seyfried,et al.  Empirical data for pedestrian flow through bottlenecks , 2009 .

[8]  Andreas Schadschneider,et al.  Empirical Results for Pedestrian Dynamics at Bottlenecks , 2009, PPAM.

[9]  Serge P. Hoogendoorn,et al.  Capacity of doors during evacuation conditions , 2010 .

[10]  M. Schreckenberg,et al.  Experimental study of pedestrian flow through a bottleneck , 2006, physics/0610077.

[11]  Angel Garcimartín,et al.  Experimental proof of faster-is-slower in systems of frictional particles flowing through constrictions. , 2015, Physical review. E, Statistical, nonlinear, and soft matter physics.

[12]  Andreas Schadschneider,et al.  Critical bottleneck size for jamless particle flows in two dimensions. , 2014, Physical review letters.

[13]  Ignacio Pagonabarraga,et al.  Clogging transition of many-particle systems flowing through bottlenecks , 2014, Scientific Reports.

[14]  Serge P. Hoogendoorn,et al.  Anticipation Behavior Upstream of a Bottleneck , 2014 .

[15]  Armin Seyfried,et al.  Influence of Geometry Parameters on Pedestrian Flow through Bottleneck , 2011 .

[16]  Anne Dederichs,et al.  Evacuation of Children: Movement on Stairs and on Horizontal Plane , 2012 .

[17]  Hyejin Oh,et al.  Main factor causing “faster-is-slower” phenomenon during evacuation: rodent experiment and simulation , 2017, Scientific Reports.

[18]  Xiaodong Liu,et al.  Empirical Data for Pedestrian Counterflow through Bottlenecks in the Channel , 2014 .

[19]  Bernhard Steffen,et al.  New Insights into Pedestrian Flow Through Bottlenecks , 2009, Transp. Sci..

[20]  Andreas Schadschneider,et al.  An Experimental Study of Pedestrian Congestions: Influence of Bottleneck Width and Length , 2009, 0911.4350.

[21]  A. Parant.  [World population prospects]. , 1990, Futuribles.

[22]  Anne Dederichs,et al.  Evacuation Dynamics of Children – Walking Speeds, Flows Through Doors in Daycare Centers , 2011 .