A study of the role of forceful behaviour in evacuations via microscopic modelling of evacuation drills

Abstract

This paper reports on the microscopic modelling of evacuation drills through merging corridors carried out to gain further insight into the dynamics of pedestrian flows in an evacuation. A new pedestrian flow modelling package called PiXIE (ProXimity toolkit for Interacting Entities) was developed. It relies on a microscopic description of an evacuation at the individual level and is based on the so-called Social Force Model. It also implements one of its many modifications which includes the notion of respect between individuals and accounts for the fact that in the experiments participants tended to behave in a non-competitive way towards each other. The model was used to explain some of t..