Modeling the evacuation behavior considering the effect of dangerous source

Modeling the pedestrian's evacuation behaviour in danger is an interesting and challenging work. In this paper, pedestrian's microscopic psychological characteristics and movement characteristics of evacuation behaviour are discussed and analysed. A modified social force model is proposed to describe the movement behaviour affected by dangerous source. In this model, the concept of most possible detouring directions is proposed, and an algorithm of calculating the directions is introduced. The self-driven force and repulsive force are reformulated. The spreading dynamics of dangerous source and coefficient of risk are integrated into this model. Simulations in a room with a single exit have been implemented. According to simulations, the influence of the factors, such as exit width, risk coefficient, scale of crowd is discussed in detail. The simulation results show that our model can reproduce the 'fast-is-slow' effect in dangerous situation. A large risk coefficient may reduce the evacuation time in some extent. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd.