Behavioral patterns of children during emergency evacuations: a comparative analysis of experimental observations and simulation results

作者：Liang Chen, Qiao Chen, Jian Zhang, Chuan-Zhi Xie, Tie‐Qiao Tang, Yanyan Chen · 发表于：Journal of Statistical Mechanics Theory and Experiment · 年份：2024 · DOI：10.1088/1742-5468/ad363b · 被引用次数：15 · 研究领域：Evacuation and Crowd Dynamics、Opportunistic and Delay-Tolerant Networks、Human Mobility and Location-Based Analysis

Abstract This study investigates the behavioral patterns of children during emergency evacuations through a dual approach comprising controlled experimental evacuations within a classroom and computational modeling via a cellular automaton (CA) model. Observations from the experiments reveal several characteristic behaviors among children, including preferences for destinations, the impact of obstacles on their movement, as well as patterns of exit utilization, running and pushing during the evacuation process. Drawing upon these empirical findings, a CA model is developed to encapsulate these observed behaviors. A novel algorithm is introduced within this model to simulate the pushing behavior of children during emergency evacuations. Numerical simulations are conducted to validate the capability of the model to replicate the observed behaviors. The simulation results confirm that the model accurately reproduces the child behavior during evacuations. Furthermore, the results indicate that the total evacuation time is directly influenced by both the proportion of children exhibiting pushing behavior and the strength of the pushing force. These insights advance our understanding of child behavior in emergency situations and have significant implications for enhancing public safety.