Crowd Evacuation for Indoor Public Spaces

Rapid evacuation of occupants from indoor public indoor spaces will saves lives in emergency responses. To determine optimal configurations, we examine number and locations of exit doors on hypothetical rooms and participant crowds. We have used multiagent system modeling techniques with some inspiration from swarms and grid communications. Our other inspirations come from the crowd dynamics that is an emerging discipline for study of pedestrian traffic in densely populated urban environments. Our simulations allow testing common intuitions and current building codes. This will serve as a useful tool for forecasting and future design practices