Modelling Passenger Evacuation from Metro Platforms Considering Passenger Flow Guidance and Small Group Behaviour

Passenger flow guidance and small group behaviour during the actual evacuation process in metro stations greatly affect the behaviours of individual passengers and the evacuation result. To make a better simulation on the actual evacuation situation, the social force model was explored, which can take into account passenger flow guidance and small group behaviour. The model was modified by analysing the influence of passenger flow guidance and small group behaviour on the expected velocity of passengers. A multi-agent technique that involves realistic perception and decision processes was employed to develop a model for simulating passenger evacuation from a metro platform. Xizhimen metro station in Beijing was used as a case study object to verify the proposed model. Results indicate that both passenger flow guidance and small group behaviour have obvious effects on the evacuation time and efficiency, bottleneck areas, and detour distances. Passenger flow guidance increases the evacuation efficiency by 18%-45% and small group behaviour leads to an increase of 17% in the detour distance.