Physics-based modeling of crowd evacuation in the Unity game engine

Abstract

Crowds of people are often found in enclosed or constricted spaces. Evacuation in such situations is usually conducted calmly, but real or perceived danger may trigger panic. In panicked crowds, the interpersonal distance crowd members normally observe is often overwhelmed by the physical pressure of crowd members pushing against each other. That pressure can both slow evacuation and lead to injury or death. Models have been developed to study crowd evacuation in a range of situations. This paper describes the implementation, testing, and validation of a crowd evacuation model using Unity, a commercial computer game engine. A realistic physics-based model of crowd movement that calculates and considers the physical pressure crowd members exert on each other was implemented in Unity. The implemented model was tested under both nonpanicked and panicked scenarios; those tests exhibited known qualitative characteristics of such scenarios. The model was then quantitatively validated by comparing its results to the outcome of an actual evacuation event, the 2003 fire at The Station nightclub in Rhode Island. The implementation and validation show that Unity can be an effective tool for evacuation modeling.