Faster and safer evacuations induced by closed vestibules

TL;DR

This study uses the social force model to optimize pedestrian evacuation through architectural vestibules, demonstrating that specific vestibule dimensions can nearly double flow rates and reduce crowd pressure, enhancing safety.

Contribution

It introduces a novel analysis of vestibule design parameters to optimize evacuation flow and safety, highlighting the benefits of 1-door and 2-doors vestibules over no-vestibule scenarios.

Findings

Optimal vestibule dimensions can nearly double evacuation flow.

Properly tuned vestibules control crowd density and prevent blocking clusters.

2-doors vestibules outperform 1-door in reducing crowd pressure.

Abstract

Improving emergency evacuations is a top priority in human safety and in pedestrian dynamics. In this paper, we use the social force model, in order to optimize high-anxiety pedestrian evacuations. We explore two architectural layouts, the 1-door vestibule, and the 2-doors vestibule. The "vestibule" is defined as the room next to the exit door and it is characterized by two structural parameters: the vestibule width ($d$) and the vestibule door width ($w$). We found that, specific values of $d$ and $w$, can almost double the evacuation flow compared to the no-vestibule scenario. The key to this achievement is that the density (close to the exit door) can be controlled by $d$ and $w$. Therefore, it is possible to tune these parameters to a density that maximizes the available space while preventing the formation of blocking clusters at the exit door ($\rho \sim 2.5\,$p/m$^2$). As opposed to the optimal condition, low-density values ($\rho \sim 1\,$p/m$^2$) lead to suboptimal flow since there is unused space left; while higher density values ($\rho \sim 4\,$p/m$^2$) also lead to suboptimal flow due to the presence of blocking clusters at the exit. Moreover, we take into account the usually foreseen fact that high pressures can actually be reached at the exit, threatening the health of pedestrians. Therefore, we studied the crowd pressure using the agents' overlap as an indicative. We found that the explored vestibules reduce the crowd pressure compared to the no-vestibule situation. In particular, we show that the 2-doors vestibule scenario performs better than the 1-door vestibule, because it reduces the overall local density (by enforcing the crowd to spread out more).