Models and experiments on pedestrian evacuation

KUPERMAN, MARCELO

La Paz

Workshop; XVI LAWNP; 2019

Universidad Mayor de San Andres

The study of pedestrian dynamics has been receiving great attention during the last years. The interest on the subject traverses the several areas of knowledge and researchers from a broad spectra of disciplines are studying those phenomena from complementary points of view. Of particular interest is the dynamics of an evacuation process. During an evacuation, pedestrians need to abandoned an enclosing through one or more available exits, some times narrow enough to generate tragic events. The complex nature of this process allows to trace links with studies in granular matter and game theory among others. In this talk we will focus in the interplay of these two areas to formulate mathematical models and to study and understand experimental data. The novelty introduced in our approach is to consider behavioural aspects related to the decision taking of the pedestrians at the moment of approaching the exit and interacting with other pedestrians. We will show how three different methodologies that include the mentioned behavioural aspects in the description of an evacuation process lead to the same phenomenology, not fully explained by previous works.