An extended cellular automata model with modified floor field for evacuation*

Abstract

The floor field model has been widely used in evacuation simulation research based on cellular automata model. However, conventional methods of setting floor field will lead to highly insufficient utilization of the exit area when people gather on one side of the exit. In this study, an extended cellular automata model with modified floor field is proposed to solve this problem. Additionally, a congestion judgment mechanism is integrated in our model, whereby people can synthetically judge the degree of congestion and distance in front of them to determine whether they need to change another exit to evacuate or not. We contrasted the simulation results of the conventional floor field model, the extended model proposed in this paper, and Pathfinder software in a same scenario. It is demonstrated that this extended model can ameliorate the problem of insufficient utilization of the exit area and the trajectory of pedestrian movement and the crowd shape of pedestrians in front of exit in this new model are more realistic than those of the other two models. The findings have implications for modeling pedestrian evacuation.