Modeling occupant evacuation using cellular automata - Effect of human behavior and building characteristics on evacuation

This paper presents a microdiscrete evacuation model which emphasizes the human behavior and is focused on studying the generic properties of occupant evacuation from crowded large, open spaces after a fixed premovement stage. By using Cellular Automata (CA) in developing the rules, the model achieves the advantages of effectively capturing the behavior of occupants at the individual-level while attaining realistic collective level activity. The lively demonstration of the evacuation process offers an easy examination of occupant movement on computer. The studies on some important characteristics in evacuation such as the existence of different velocities of people and the different structure of building offer some key factors affecting evacuation efficiency. By studying on evacuation from a corridor, with and without widen part, we found disordered moving states will badly decrease the evacuation efficiency. It enables us to understand the special phenomena in evacuation and is helpful in performance-based building design.