Critical Review of Emergency Evacuation Simulation Models.
Critical Review of Emergency Evacuation Simulation
Models.
(130 K)
Santos, G.; Aguirre, B. E.
NIST SP 1032; January 2005.
Workshop on Building Occupant Movement During Fire
Emergencies. Proceedings. Session 3.3. June 10-11,
2004, Gaithersburg, MD, Peacock, R. D.; Kuligowski, E.
D., Editor(s)(s), 27-52 pp, 2005.
Keywords:
occupants; people movement; emergencies; evacuation;
fire models; egress; simulation; psychology; human
actions; human behavior
Abstract:
The paper presents a critical review of selected
simulation models including (1) flow based, (2) cellular
automata, (3) agent-based, and (4) activity-based
models, as well as of three simulation models that
incorporate social scientific processes--FIRESCAP,
EXODUS, and the Multi-Agent Simulation for Crisis
Management. It concludes by pointing out the so far
ignored insights that could be derived from the fields
of social psychology and social organization. A number
of predictions regarding the effects of social
organizational variables on the timing and movement of
evacuating groups are presented. We offer a critical
review of selected simulation models of evacuation
behavior based on published descriptions of their
characteristics rather than on empirical tests of their
claims (compare to Kuligowski, 2003). A second section
of the paper identifies social sciences approaches that
could improve present day simulation models. Our
argument is that the social sciences could provide
important new directions to simulation models of
emergency evacuations; to the extent that simulation
models are attempting to incorporate actual human social
behavior, a dialogue among engineers, computer
scientists, fire scientists, and social scientists would
render such models more accurate and realistic. So far,
as we will show, the absence of this dialogue has
impacted many of these models.
Building and Fire Research Laboratory
National Institute of Standards and Technology
Gaithersburg, MD 20899