Modeling of walking through pathways and a stairway by cellular automata based on the guideline for evacuation

Abstract

Walking through a pathway, a T-junction, and a stairway was modeled by Cellular Automata, introducing local neighbor and transition rules based on the Public Guideline for Evacuation. Setting two types of "personal space" for each pedestrian in one direction and 45 inclined direction, a person moves to the next cell at some probability in 24 directions by interpolation of these two patterns. The moving probability was evaluated just for the crowd flow through a straight pathway so that the relationship between density and flow rate might agree with that proposed by the Guideline. It is shown that these flow models can be applied to inclined 24 direction pathways. As the combination of straight pathways, the crowd flow through T-junction was simulated, which showed good agreement with the estimated results according to the Guideline. The flow in a stairway was also simulated in the present paper. © 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.