Human-ant behavior in evacuation dynamics

Abstract

Recently, it has been shown that ants evacuate efficiently during a lifeand- death situation displaying an unselfish behavior (Boari et al., PlosOne 8:11, 2013, e81082). Here, we model this ant behavior and compare it with the more expected selfish (human) behavior by considering different mixtures of evacuating agents with both kind of behaviors. Two unselfish behaviors were studied using the social force model as physical bases. For the ant-like behavior, an optimum mixture is found at 80%. In the case of living-obstacle behavior, only 29% is required to achieve the minimum evacuation time. In general, the simulations with a mixture of selfish and unselfish behavior show improvement in the evacuation time and blockage probability of the exit.