Identification of Factors Influencing the Evacuation Walking Speed in Padang, Indonesia

This paper aims to identify factors influencing the walking speed of evacuees by conducting an evacuation drill in Padang, West Sumatera, Indonesia. A number of 18 volunteers and 6 observers, were gathered in an evacuation experiment on 3 routes with 5 segments each. The chosen routes are almost equal in terms of distance, but different in terms of the number of turning points. The experiment comprises of three cases in terms of the complexity of the route. These cases represent a simple, a medium and a complex route based on the number of turning points. The volunteers were asked to move, as if in an evacuation, to a particular place which was assumed to be a shelter. The observers were placed at some particular waypoints to record the time when an evacuee passes their location. The distance between the observers was measured using a manual distance meter. This study found that the average walking speed during the evacuation was 1.69 m/s. In addition, walking speed varied by age, gender, and walking distance. This finding significantly has an effect on the estimations of the coverage area of tsunami shelters. The data collection method is one of the novelties of this research. In this study, the walking speed was observed through an evacuation drill from a location to a shelter of 1.5 km away, whilst most of the previous studies estimate the walking speed based on an observation of a group of pedestrians crossing a road.