Examining effect of architectural adjustment on pedestrian crowd flow at bottleneck

Abstract

Recent advances in bottleneck studies have highlighted that different architectural adjustments at the exit may reduce the probability of clogging at the exit thereby enhancing the outflow of the individuals. However, those studies are mostly limited to the controlled experiments with non-human organisms or predictions from simulation models. Complementary data with human subjects to test the model's prediction is limited in literature. This study aims to examine the effect of different geometrical layouts at the exit towards the pedestrian flow via controlled laboratory experiments with human participants. The experimental setups involve pedestrian flow through 14 different geometrical configurations that include different exit locations and obstacles near exit under normal and slow running conditions. It was found that corner exit performed better than middle exit under same obstacle condition. Further, it was observed that the effectiveness of obstacle is sensitive to its size and distance from the exit. Thus, with careful architectural adjustment within a standard escape area, a substantial increase in outflow under normal and slow running conditions could be achieved. However, it was also observed that placing the obstacle too close to the exit can reduce outflow under both normal and slow running conditions. Moreover, we could not observe "faster-is-slower" effect under slow running condition and instead noticed "faster-is-faster" effect. In addition, the power law fitted headway distribution demonstrated that any architectural configurations that enhanced the outflow have higher exponent value compared to the other configuration that negates the outflow. The findings from this paper demonstrate that there is a scope to adjust the architectural elements to optimize the maximum outflow at the egress point. Further, the output from the experiments can be used to develop and verify mathematical models intended to simulate crowd evacuation.From the data in Table 3, we could conclude that for normal walking situation, comparing with standard design ( s J  =2.67 Ped/s/m, S.D =  0.55 Ped/s/m), the most efficient setup is #11 (Corner exit,  =60 cm, D =100 cm) with 19.4% R. E. ( s J  =3.18 Ped/s/m, S.D =  0.34 Ped/s/m), and the least efficient geometry is #2 (Middle exit,  =60 cm, D =60 cm) with -10.6% R. E. ( s J  =2.38 Ped/s/m, S.D =  0.12 Ped/s/m). For slow running condition that is more representative of emergency evacuation condition, comparing with standard design ( s J  =3.37 Ped/s/m, S.D =  0.22 Ped/s/m), the most efficient setup was also #11 with 32.7% R. E. ( s J  =4.47 Ped/s/m, S.D =  0.19 Ped/s/m), and the least one turned into #5 (Middle exit,  =100 cm, D =60 cm) with -5.6% R. E. ( s J  =3.18 Ped/s/m, S.D =  0.08 Ped/s/m).

Experimental study of pedestrian flow mixed with wheelchair users through funnel-shaped bottlenecks

“…Garcimartín et al [31] calculated the time headway of the sheep herding and adopted power law distribution to quantify the clogging. Referring to pedestrian flows, less congestion is found in the scenario where the exit was at the corner instead of the middle [27].…”

Escape dynamics based on bounded rationality

“…With the development of sensor technology and the improvement of microchip computing power, collecting more redundant data and using more realistic methods to simulate the escape process becomes possible [20,21,22,23,24]. It is of practical significance that the disaster may happen in different complex environments [25]. It's natural to introduce the game theory into the evacuation model, for it can include the interaction between people (and environment) selfconsistently [26,27].…”

Investigating the Exits’ Symmetry Impact on the Evacuation Process of Classrooms and Lecture Halls: An Agent-Based Modeling Approach

“…Based on these results, it has been observed that, in most cases, the symmetrical doors configurations provide good/optimal results, while only some of the asymmetrical doors configurations provide comparable/better results. The model is configurable and can be used in various scenarios.Symmetry 2020, 12, 627 2 of 25 demonstrated the beneficial effect of such an obstacle, a series of other studies have followed [28], some of them revealing a smaller positive effect [29,30], others stating the influence based on the dimension and position of the obstacle [31], while others proving the ineffectiveness of such a situation [32,33]. In a recent paper, Zuriguel et al [34] studied the effect of an obstacle placed in front of the exit, and the authors concluded that this situation slightly favors the evacuation of the persons near the wall, prompting a debate on the role of the column in an evacuation process.…”