Improved social force model based on emotional contagion and evacuation assistant

Abstract

To comprehensively analyze the impact of both emotional contagion and evacuation assistant on the whole process of crowd evacuation, and to provide some feasible suggestions for safety officers, a novel approach named Improved Social Force Model Based on Emotional Contagion and Evacuation Assistant is proposed. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work that comprehensively takes both emotional contagion and evacuation assistant into account in the relevant studies of Social Force Model. Firstly, we optimize the original Social Force Model to offset the overlapping phenomenon caused by pedestrians’ body compression and relative tangential motion. Secondly, we construct an emotional-contagion-based model, which is integrated into the self-driving force of the Social Force Model, to dynamically adjust pedestrian’s velocity and direction. Finally, specific evacuation strategies are adopted for different types of pedestrians, and evacuation assistants are set to guide the evacuees who are panic about the hazards in a rational way. Obviously, shown by extensive evaluations and experimental results, the model presented in this article reflects the influence of Emotional Contagion and Evacuation Assistant on crowd evacuation genuinely and efficiently, outperforming mainstream approaches in evacuation efficiency.