Influence of selfish and polite behaviours on a pedestrian evacuation through a narrow exit: A quantitative characterisation

ALEXNDRE NICOLAS; SEBASTIÁN BOUZAT; MARCELO KUPERMAN

Hafei

Conferencia; 8th International Conference on Pedestrian and Evacuation Dynamics (PED2016); 2016

UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY OF CHINA

We study the influence of selfish vs. polite behaviours on the dynamics of a pedestrian evacuationthrough a narrow exit. To this end, experiments involving about 80 participants with distinct pre-scribed behaviours are performed; reinjection of participants into the setup allowed us to improve thestatistics. Notwithstanding the fluctuations in the instantaneous flow rate, we find that a station-ary regime is almost immediately reached. The average flow rate increases monotonically with thefraction cs of vying (selfish) pedestrians, which corresponds to a ?faster-is-faster? effect in our exper-imental conditions; it is also positively correlated with the average density of pedestrians in front ofthe door, up to nearly close-packing. At large cs , the flow displays marked intermittency, with burstsof quasi-simultaneous escapes.In addition to these findings, we wonder whether the effect of cooperation is specific to systemsof intelligent beings, or whether it can be reproduced by a purely mechanical surrogate. To thispurpose, we consider a bidimensional granular flow through an orifice in which some grains are made?cooperative? by repulsive magnetic interactions which impede their mutual collisions.