Pedestrian behavior during evacuation from road tunnel in smoke condition—Empirical results

Abstract

Five evacuation experiments were performed in a road tunnel in order to test how pedestrians react when exposed to reduced visibility, how the decision making process is carried out, and finally what is the impact of various circumstances like: different level of smokiness, competitive behavior or learning effect on an evacuation process. In four experiments pedestrians were exposed to artificial, non-toxic smoke. During evacuation of a group of people gathered in low and moderate level of smokiness (when Cs < 0.5m−1) we observed multi-line patterns created by pedestrians. Decision making was engaged in only by the first group of passengers, while under heavy smokiness Cs > 0.7m−1 we have observed decision making by small groups and characteristic double-lines patterns. In four experiments the same group of participants was involved, and a learning effect was observed: increasingly shorter pre-movement time and decreasing time required to leave the main tunnel. We show, that movement speed in smoke is influenced by the evacuees’ attitude and familiarity with environment and evacuation procedures and not only by the visibility level.

What Is the Knowledge of Evacuation Procedures in Road Tunnels? Survey Results of Users in Poland

“…In order to better evaluate the survey results, partial results were compared with observations from real-scale experimental studies on evacuation, conducted by us in the Emilia tunnel in Laliki, Poland [17] and in the tunnel under the Martwa Wisła River in Gda ńsk. Approximately 50 students of the AGH University of Science and Technology took part in the first experiment in the Emilia tunnel in Laliki in 2016.…”

“…The aim of this paper is to focus on another relevant aspect of evacuation safety studies; namely, the use of surveys to assess road tunnel safety. The surveys involved 504 participants, of whom 12.7% had previously participated in experimental studies on road tunnel evacuation [17]. This paper corresponds to projects including experimental research in the field of road tunnel evacuation [17], correlation analysis of one-way-traffic speed [31], and the use of effective evacuation simulation methods [32].…”

“…These include research based on real-case analyses, experimental studies, surveys, and computer simulation studies. It should be stressed that the behavioral aspects of an evacuation process have become an increasingly more important subject of research in recent years [3,17,[20][21][22][23][24][25]. Surveying has been employed by various researchers to investigate evacuation safety.…”

“…All policies in this regard should be comprehensive and, importantly, rely solely on proven hypotheses [15,16]. Reporting on the results of the assessment of awareness among road tunnel users should be the first step towards improving their education, including their behavior and knowledge of the safe use of the structures in question [17].…”

Simulation of Pedestrian Evacuation in University Canteen Based on Cellular Automata

“…As is well known, pedestrian evacuation is a common phenomenon at many pedestrian gathering places [1]- [4] such as rail transit stations, shopping malls, bus stations, cultural activity centers, etc. In some cases, pedestrian crowding becomes an important problem disturbing us and sometimes leads to stampedes.…”