On the effectiveness of mobile service notification for passenger egress during large public events

In this contribution we evaluate the effectiveness of mobile services for passenger egress of a train station during a large public event using an agent-based simulation approach. For this simulation we built a virtual replica of the Cologne central train station and collected empirical data on passenger numbers and their movements during a large public event. We simulate several different scenarios and compare the results using key performance indicators, such as time for egress. Our results show that dedicated cell broadcast messages under the described circumstances can be used to decrease evacuation time significantly and that the simulation can be used to quickly investigate the relevant key performance indicators needed to asses and evaluate the effectiveness of different notification and evacuation strategies