Dynamisim: Simulating crowd evacuation in a dynamic environment during a fire emergency for floor plan analysis

• Main Authors: Billones, Philip Henry C., Felipe, Jan Alfred M., Villaluna, Rene Adrian S., Vinas, Frederick A.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2008
• Subjects: Computer Sciences
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_bachelors/14393
• Institution: De La Salle University

Safety and security are some of the basic needs of mankind. These needs are violated when threats to populated areas like terrorism and calamities which endanger numerous lives. Events like 9/11 (Wilkinson, 2007), the earthquake in Indonesia (Quiano, 2006), and even the Ozone disco tragedy (Lopez, 1996) have paved the way for the improvement of safety systems and evacuation procedures, and the crowd evacuation simulator is a useful tool. Current crowd simulators are focused on a static environment, and often do not take into consideration the constant changes within the environment and the unpredictable events which affects each agent. During such events, the controllability and predictability of the situation may distinguish the kind or intensity of a person's reaction. Reactions vary because every person is unique in their perception and experience of a stressful scenario. The common emotional reactions to stress are anxiety, anger and aggression, apathy, and lack of logical reasoning (Fredrickson, Loftus, Nolen-hoeksema, and Smith, (2003). The study of the effects of a dynamic environment to the behavior of the occupants will aid in the production of a more realistic crowd simulator which is a useful tool for determining the safety of a floor plan, since every agent within the crowd may act uniquely as an individual reacting to the effects of stress and panic. The stress model was based on Yerkes and Dodson's (1908) law of stress which dictates a person's behavior depending on the combination of the amount of its responsibilities and knowledge, which is manifested by the agents of the system. And finally, as the environment affects the stress, the stress then affects the evacuation. As the stress of an agent increases, the faster it wants to evacuate, and in occasions the longer it takes for an agent to evacuate, the higher the amount of stress it experiences.