Incorporating Social Behaviors in Egress Simulation

Emergency evacuation (egress) is considered one of the most important issues in the design of buildings and public facilities. Given the complexity and variability in an evacuation situation, computational simulation tool is often used to help assess the performance of an egress design. Studies have revealed that social behaviors can have significant influence on the evacuating crowd during an emergency. Among the challenges in designing safe egress thus include identifying the social behaviors and incorporating them in the design analysis. Even though many egress simulation tools now exist, realistic human and social behaviors commonly observed in emergency situations are not supported. This paper describes an egress simulation approach that incorporates research results from social science regarding human and social behaviors observed in emergency situations. By integrating the behavioral theories proposed by social scientists, the simulation tool can potentially produce more realistic predications than current tools which heavily rely on simplified and, in most cases, mathematical assumptions.