Evacuation simulation considering action of the guard in an artificial attack

TL;DR

This study models pedestrian evacuation during an artificial attack, analyzing how guard actions and parameters like deterrence radius influence casualty rates and evacuation efficiency.

Contribution

It introduces an extended floor field model incorporating guard actions and attacker behaviors, proposing an effective evacuation strategy and analyzing key parameters' effects.

Findings

Guard can quickly catch attackers but increases congestion and casualties.

Preference for approaching the guard reduces casualties by dispersing crowds.

Increasing capture distance and deterrence radius impacts attack success and casualty numbers.

Abstract

To investigate the evacuation behaviors of pedestrians considering action of the guard and develop an effective evacuation strategy in the artificial attack, an extended floor field model was proposed. In this model, the assault on pedestrians, the death of pedestrians and the capture of the guard were involved simultaneously. An alternative evacuation strategy which can largely reduce the number of death was developed and effects of several key parameters such as the deterrence radius and capture distance on evacuation dynamics were studied. Results show that congestion near the exit has dual effects. More specially, the guard could catch all attackers in a short time because the attackers would have more concentrated distribution, but more casualties would happen because pedestrians are hard to escape the attack due to congestion. In contrast, when pedestrians have more preference of approaching the guard, although the guard would take more time to capture the attackers result from the dispersion of attackers, the death toll would decrease. One of the reason is the dispersal of the crowd and the decrease in congestion would be beneficial for escape. Another is the attackers would be killed before launching the attack to the people those are around the guard, in other words, the guard would protect a large number of pedestrians from being killed. Moreover, increasing capture distance of the guard can effectively reduce the casualties and the catch time. As the deterrence radius reflecting the tendency of escaping from the guard for attackers rises, it would become more difficult for the guard to catch the attackers and more casualties are caused. However, when the deterrence radius reaches a certain level, the number of deaths would be reduced because the attackers would prefer to stay as far away as possible from instead of the position where they could attack more people.