Potential fields in smoke dispersion applied to evacuation simulations

Abstract

We often visit places with a large concentration of people, such as malls, football stadiums, restaurants or nightclubs. Through the media, there are often reports of emergency’s cases in these places. It is known that in a fire situation, one of the main causes of deaths is the inhalation of smoke. Therefore, it is essential that at the start of emergency situations people leave quickly to avoid possible injuries. We have investigated the dispersion of smoke in closed places and simulate the crowds’ behavior in these situations. This paper aims to present a new proposal to model the smoke dispersion in closed environments using the concept of potential fields joined to cellular automata. To validate the work, a behavioral model for the simulation of people evacuation using the multiagent approach was implemented.