A weighted evolving network model for pedestrian evacuation

Abstract

We examine how the dynamics of dependency relationship between evacuees affect the evacuation time and cooperative behavior. First, we place the population in a weighted network, and then model the dynamics of dependency relationship between evacuees by letting link weights to evolve. By careful examination of the parameter space, the simulation results indicated that a weaker link weight evolution weakens the local behavioral factor in the evacuation process, which further enhance the efficiency of crowd evacuation. On the contrary, a stronger link weight evolution promotes heterogeneity of the crowd, thus strengthening the local behavioral factor in the evacuation process and prolonging the evacuation time. In addition, we conduct a simple experiment: evacuation of a room with two exits. By adjusting the length of two exits, we can guide the gathering behavior and regulate the crowd evacuation. This experiment can also provide an explanation for why the exits should located symmetrical in the middle of a wall.