Does communication enhance pedestrians transport in the dark?

TL;DR

This paper investigates how communication among pedestrians in dark, obscured tunnels influences their collective movement and evacuation efficiency, highlighting the importance of communication thresholds and tunnel capacity.

Contribution

It introduces a lattice model analyzing the impact of communication efficiency and tunnel capacity on pedestrian transport in dark environments.

Findings

Higher communication trust leads to quicker exit discovery.

Effective communication prevents crowd disasters.

Thresholds significantly influence diffusion properties.

Abstract

We study the motion of pedestrians through an obscure tunnel where the lack of visibility hides the exits. Using a lattice model, we explore the effects of communication on the effective transport properties of the crowd of pedestrians. More precisely, we study the effect of two thresholds on the structure of the effective nonlinear diffusion coefficient. One threshold models pedestrians's communication efficiency in the dark, while the other one describes the tunnel capacity. Essentially, we note that if the evacuees show a maximum trust (leading to a fast communication), they tend to quickly find the exit and hence the collective action tends to prevent the occurrence of disasters.