Flood-pedestrian simulator for modelling human response dynamics during flood-induced evacuation: Hillsborough stadium case study

Abstract

The flood-pedestrian simulator uses a parallel approach to couple a hydrodynamic model to a pedestrian model in a single agent-based modelling (ABM) framework on graphics processing units (GPU), allowing dynamic exchange and processing of multiple-Agent information across the two models. The simulator is enhanced with more realistic human body characteristics and in-model behavioural rules. The new features are implemented in the pedestrian model to factor in age-and gender-related walking speeds for the pedestrians in dry zones around the floodwater and to include a maximum excitement condition. It is also adapted to use age-related moving speeds for pedestrians inside the floodwater, with either a walking condition or a running condition. The walking and running conditions are applicable without and with an existing two-way interaction condition that considers the effects of pedestrian congestion on the floodwater spreading. A new autonomous change of direction condition is proposed to make pedestrian agents autonomous in wayfinding decisions driven by their individual perceptions of the flood risk or the dominant choice made by the others. The relevance of the newly added characteristics and rules is demonstrated by applying the augmented simulator to reproduce a synthetic test case of a flood evacuation in a shopping centre, to then contrast its outcomes against the version of the simulator that does not consider age and gender in the agent characteristics. The enhanced simulator is demonstrated for a real-world case study of a mass evacuation from the Hillsborough football stadium, showing usefulness for flood emergency evacuation planning in outdoor spaces where destination choice and individual risk perception have great influence on the simulation outcomes.