Empirical study of the influence of social groups in evacuation scenarios

TL;DR

This empirical study investigates how social groups influence evacuation dynamics by conducting laboratory experiments with pupils, revealing that larger groups can unexpectedly decrease evacuation times.

Contribution

It provides reliable empirical data on social group effects in evacuation scenarios, testing model predictions with detailed trajectory analysis.

Findings

Larger social groups can reduce evacuation times.

Intra-group interaction strength affects evacuation dynamics.

Group composition influences evacuation efficiency.

Abstract

The effects of social groups on pedestrian dynamics, especially in evacuation scenarios, have attracted some interest recently. However, due to the lack of reliable empirical data, most of the studies focussed on modelling aspects. It was shown that social groups can have a considerable effect, e.g. on evacuation times. In order to test the model predictions we have performed laboratory experiments of evacuations with different types and sizes of the social groups. The experiments have been performed with pupils of different ages. Parameters that have been considered are (1) group size, (2) strength of intra-group interactions, and (3) composition of the groups (young adults, children, and mixtures). For all the experiments high-quality trajectories for all participants have been obtained using the PeTrack software. This allows for a detailed analysis of the group effects. One surprising observation is a decrease of the evacuation time with increasing group size.