Establishing the Proper Seating Arrangement in Elevated Lecture Halls for a Faster Evacuation Process
Authored by Camelia Delcea, Liviu-Adrian Cotfas, Liliana Craciun, Anca Gabriela Molanescu
Date Published: 2019
DOI: 10.1109/access.2019.2909637
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Abstract
As time is crucial in the human evacuation process during an emergency
situation, several aspects related to how the humans involved in such a
process act have been studied over the time, underlying that the humans'
behavior is rather unpredictable and depends on social background,
emotions, the degree of familiarity with the environment, age, gender,
and so on. On the other hand, it has been determined that the
characteristics of the environment are important in such situations as
they may facilitate a shorter evacuation time. It has been shown that
exits characteristics, such as width or their number, have a positive
direct impact on the evacuation time. In this context, this paper aims
to analyze another environmental aspect, namely, the seat arrangement,
and to determine how the seats should be placed in order to reduce the
evacuation time for a given configuration of the doors. On this purpose,
an elevated lecture hall with two exits has been chosen, as it
represents one of the most populated places within the public buildings,
characterized not only by a high population density but also by a
limited capacity to escape. A case study has been conducted using 97
human subjects and an agent-based model has been created considering
their individual characteristics. The model has been simulated on eight
different seat arrangements for 15 different positions on the two
exit-doors. As a result, the proper seating arrangement for each of the
15 exit-door positions has been presented along with the study's
limitations.
Tags
agent-based simulation
Simulation
Agent-based modeling
Leadership
Model
pedestrian evacuation
Contagion
crowd
Route choice
Strategies
Human-behavior
Evacuation process
Seating arrangement
Elevated lecture halls
Room
evacuation