Agent-based model for earthquake pedestrians' evacuation in urban outdoor scenarios: Behavioural patterns definition and evacuation paths choice

The assessment of seismic risk at urban scale does not actually consider aspects related to human behaviours, unlike other kind of events; moreover, the simulation of phases of pedestrian evacuation and motion in earthquake evacuation is a rarely inquired issue. From this point of view, this work proposes an innovative approach to earthquake evacuation, presenting an agent based model to describe phases and rules of motion for pedestrians. The model is based on the analysis of videotapes concerning real events. Results firstly show a scheme of chronological organisation of experimentally noticed behaviours activated during an earthquake evacuation. Secondly, the related behavioural agent-based model is presented by using the i* language and posing attention to relationships between pedestrians and environment. A particular attention is given to the relationships in evacuation paths choice depending on configuration of environment and damage distribution after earthquake. Additionally, experimental values of distance between people and evacuation average speed in the first phases of outdoor motion are provided. The mathematical definitions for the model and the software implementation of the model will be implemented. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.