Room evacuation in the presence of a obstacle

GUILLERMO A. FRANK, CLAUDIO O. DORSO

PHYSICA A - STATISTICAL AND THEORETICAL PHYSICS

ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV

Lugar: Amsterdam; Año: 2011 p. 2135 - 2145

0378-4371

p { margin-bottom: 0.21cm; } The investigation of human behaviour trying to escape from a room under panic is an important issue in complex systems research. Several authors called the attention on the fact that placing an obstacle near the exit, improves the evacuation time of the room. We studied this effect in the context of the ?social force model?. We show that placing an obstacle does not guarantee, by itself, better chances of survival for all pedestrians. The way they choose to avoid the obstacle is critical for their own performance. We found that not only the faster they try to escape, the slower they get out (?faster is slower? effect), but also, the short cut they might take in order to get to the exit will probably do no better (?clever is not always better? effect).