Evacuation behaviour of crowds under high and low levels of urgency: Experiments of reaction time, exit choice and exit-choice adaptation

Haghani, Milad; Sarvi, Majid; Shahhoseini, Zahra

doi:10.1016/j.ssci.2020.104679

Cited by 78 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 89 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…However, the results observed in real situations and simulation experiments show values below the maximum planned flow rate [44]. This could be attributed to familiarity between pedestrians when exiting the door [45], competition between pedestrians (or selfish behavior) [3,9,46], and the degree to which the door is open [21,26]. For example, flow rate increases as competition increases, but if this exceeds a certain level, evacuation efficiency decreases [3].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Consideration of the Door Opening Process in Pedestrian Flow: Experiments on Door Opening Direction, Door Handle Type, and Limited Visibility

et al. 2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The door is a section prone to bottlenecks and is an important element in the study of pedestrian flow. Therefore, characteristics of doors (e.g., width, location, and the distance between doors) have been taken into consideration in the existing literature related to doors. According to several previous studies, it appears likely that the door opening process (DOP) influences pedestrian flow. However, the number of studies examining the DOP remains small. Therefore, to enhance understanding of pedestrian flow, we examined two door characteristics that could affect the DOP (opening direction (swing door: push or pull) and handle type (knob, lever, and panic bar)) and limited visibility. We conducted a walking experiment to take all variables (10 cases; 10 participants per case) into account. Statistical analysis was performed on the difference in movement times, and the results were as follows: (1) inclusion of the DOP affected pedestrian flow; (2) when visibility was limited, movement times with DOP inclusion increased significantly regardless of the door opening direction and handle type; (3) when the door opening direction was ‘push’, regardless of limited visibility and door handle type, movement times with DOP inclusion were significantly lower; and (4) the door handle type did not result in any significant difference in movement times with DOP inclusion. In addition, we calculated the delay time based on the experiment results, to include the DOP in pedestrian flow (push 1.96–2.88 s, pull 3.91–4.43 s; limited visibility: push 7.38–12.56 s, and pull 12.88–16.35 s). The results of this study could be used as basic data for the development of codes/regulations, engineering guidance, and egress models for doors.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Consideration of the Door Opening Process in Pedestrian Flow: Experiments on Door Opening Direction, Door Handle Type, and Limited Visibility

et al. 2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…They predominantly interpret herding in the context of exit choice making. However, the literature has been increasingly recognising the role of social influence in other aspects of evacuation decision-making and a few studies have looked into this problem in connection with reaction responses of evacuees [55,58,64] and exit choice adaptation (or exit choice changing) behaviour [65,66] of evacuees. Hence, in our analysis of the 24 empirical studies on this topic, we have categorised each item into one (or occasionally two) of these three categories: exit (direction) choice, exit (direction) choice changing, and reaction times.…”

Section: Definitions and Alternative Terminologies For Herdingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Particularly, the presence of multiattribute trade-off between a set of factors that include peer influence appears to be a recurring theme in all those studies [77]. In highly dense laboratory crowd experiments, the dominant pattern of exit choice behaviour has been avoiding the majority [65]. However, Haghani and Sarvi [48] have shown that when attribute ambiguity is introduced, the peer behaviour can act at a positive direction (meaning people tend to perceive direction chosen by majority more positively or at least, less negatively in relation to the alternatives for which attribute ambiguity exists).…”

Section: Herding In Exit Choicementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Proportionately, much less is known about the influence of peer behaviour on this aspect of evacuee's behaviour compared to the influence on exit choice. Recent studies that have experimented this problem, however, have shown that, in crowded evacuation scenarios (where queues form at exits), observing other people changing their exit decisions is a trigger for the observer to change the initial decision and imitate that action [65,66]. It has been shown in these experiments that once one evacuee decides to leave a queue formed at an exit and join another queue at another exit, it increases the likelihood of decision changing by others followed by a burst of decision changes.…”

Section: Herding In Exit Choice Adaptationmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Panic, Irrationality, and Herding: Three Ambiguous Terms in Crowd Dynamics Research

Haghani

Cristiani

Bode

et al. 2019

Journal of Advanced Transportation

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Background. The three terms “panic”, “irrationality”, and “herding” are ubiquitous in the crowd dynamics literature and have a strong influence on both modelling and management practices. The terms are also commonly shared between the scientific and nonscientific domains. The pervasiveness of the use of these terms is to the point where their underlying assumptions have often been treated as common knowledge by both experts and lay persons. Yet, at the same time, the literature on crowd dynamics presents ample debate, contradiction, and inconsistency on these topics. Method. This review is the first to systematically revisit these three terms in a unified study to highlight the scope of this debate. We extracted from peer-reviewed journal articles direct quotes that offer a definition, conceptualisation, or supporting/contradicting evidence on these terms and/or their underlying theories. To further examine the suitability of the term herding, a secondary and more detailed analysis is also conducted on studies that have specifically investigated this phenomenon in empirical settings. Results. The review shows that (i) there is no consensus on the definition for the terms panic and irrationality and that (ii) the literature is highly divided along discipline lines on how accurate these theories/terminologies are for describing human escape behaviour. The review reveals a complete division and disconnection between studies published by social scientists and those from the physical science domain and also between studies whose main focus is on numerical simulation versus those with empirical focus. (iii) Despite the ambiguity of the definitions and the missing consensus in the literature, these terms are still increasingly and persistently mentioned in crowd evacuation studies. (iv) Different to panic and irrationality, there is relative consistency in definitions of the term herding, with the term usually being associated with ‘(blind) imitation’. However, based on the findings of empirical studies, we argue why, despite the relative consistency in meaning, (v) the term herding itself lacks adequate nuance and accuracy for describing the role of ‘social influence’ in escape behaviour. Our conclusions also emphasise the importance of distinguishing between the social influence on various aspects of evacuation behaviour and avoiding generalisation across various behavioural layers. Conclusions. We argue that the use of these three terms in the scientific literature does not contribute constructively to extending the knowledge or to improving the modelling capabilities in the field of crowd dynamics. This is largely due to the ambiguity of these terms, the overly simplistic nature of their assumptions, or the fact that the theories they represent are not readily verifiable. Recommendations. We suggest that it would be beneficial for advancing this research field that the phenomena related to these three terms are clearly defined by more tangible and quantifiable terms and be formulated as verifiable hypotheses, so they can be operationalized for empirical testing.

show abstract

“…For the first time a majority, 13 (59%) thought it was a real emergency Proulx (2003). also further investigated human behavior in burning buildings and reported that the smell of smoke or the sight of flames are cues that become stronger and more convincing to the occupant that evacuation is necessary Haghani et al (2020). investigated the evacuation behavior of crowds under high and low levels of urgency.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Investigation of bus evacuation flow rates for tunnel fire quantitative risk assessment

Chung

Seike

Kawabata

et al. 2021

Journal of Asian Architecture and Building Engineering

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

To increase the knowledge of bus evacuation in tunnel fire scenarios, we investigated the bus evacuation flow rate in the event of a tunnel fire, starting with a video analysis of the 2012 Hsuehshan tunnel fire in Taiwan, to gain a preliminary understanding of an actual bus evacuation flow rate. Two evacuation situations were manifested with different flow rates: the first one in which bus passengers non-urgently evacuated as in the case of a daily bus experience (the first seven evacuees, 0.28 PPS (Person Per Second)) and another situation in which passengers feel the urgency to evacuate (the next twelve evacuees, 0.67 PPS). Based on the investigation of the real fire incident, we conducted a bus evacuation experiment and a bus alighting observation. And the results of flow rates of normal exit were within 0.69-0.88 and 0.21-0.48 PPS, respectively. These results were similar to the actual flow rates in the two assumed evacuation situations in the Hsuehshan tunnel fire incident (nonurgent and urgent), respectively. Our approach can provide a viable approach to describe evacuation flow rates during tunnel fires. Moreover, using the flow rate of the normal alighting situation was preferable for highly reliable tunnel fire safety evaluation.

show abstract

Evacuation behaviour of crowds under high and low levels of urgency: Experiments of reaction time, exit choice and exit-choice adaptation

Cited by 78 publications

References 89 publications

Consideration of the Door Opening Process in Pedestrian Flow: Experiments on Door Opening Direction, Door Handle Type, and Limited Visibility

Consideration of the Door Opening Process in Pedestrian Flow: Experiments on Door Opening Direction, Door Handle Type, and Limited Visibility

Panic, Irrationality, and Herding: Three Ambiguous Terms in Crowd Dynamics Research

Investigation of bus evacuation flow rates for tunnel fire quantitative risk assessment

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About