Modeling social behaviors in an evacuation simulator

Building occupants perceive information about the surrounding environment and navigate for safety during emergency evacuation (egress). They often choose their actions by interacting with their social groups and observing the actions of the surrounding crowd. Most egress simulators, however, ignore individuals’ crowd perceptions and social interactions. This paper presents a novel platform, SAFEgress (Social Agent For Egress), in which building occupants are modeled as agents who decide their evacuation actions on the basis of their knowledge of the building and their interactions with the social groups and the neighboring crowd. Results from the SAFEgress prototype show that both agents’ familiarity with the building and social influence can significantly impact egress performance. By simulating different occupants’ behaviors, architects and facility managers may better understand the influence of human and social factors on evacuation and consequently design safer buildings and egress procedures. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.