Simulating evacuation crowd with emotion and personality

Panic Spreading Model with Different Emotions under Emergency

Emotion plays an important role in decision making. In an emergency, panic can spread among crowds through person-to-person communications and can cause harmful effects on society. The aim of this paper is to propose a new theoretical model in the context of epidemiology to describe the spread of panic under an emergency. First, according to divisions in personality in the context of psychology, groups are divided into a level-headed group and an impatient group. Second, individuals in the two groups have unique personalities. Thus, the level-headed group only infects within the group, while the impatient group considers emotional infection within the group and cross infection between the groups. Then, a nonlinear infection rate is used to describe the probability of infection after an infected person contacts a susceptible person, which is more in line with the real situation. After that, the level-headed group–impatient group nonlinear SIRS panic spreading model is developed. Stable analysis of the model is obtained using the Lyapunov function method to study the stability of the panic-free equilibrium and panic-permanence equilibrium. Finally, simulations are carried out to dynamically describe the spread process of group emotional contagion.

Experimental Study on the Evaluation and Influencing Factors on Individual's Emergency Escape Capability in Subway Fire

Studying an individual’s emergency escape capability and its influencing factors is of great practical significance for evacuation and escape in subway emergencies. Taking Zhengzhou Zijing Mountain Subway station as the prototype, and using VR technology, a virtual subway fire escape scene was built. Combined with the total escape time, the total contact time with fire, and the total contact time with smoke, it proposed a calculation formula on emergency escape capability. A total of 34 participants with equal gender distribution were recruited to carry out the virtual subway fire escape experiment, and participants’ physiological data (heart rate variability, skin conductance) were real-time recorded by ErgoLAB V3.0 throughout the whole experiment. The emergency escape capability of each participant was evaluated quantitatively, and the related influencing factors were analyzed. The results show that for the age ranges (19–22 years old) in the experiment, the emergency escape capability of women is significantly lower than that of men (p < 0.05); although there is no significance in emergency escape capability in DISC personality types (p > 0.05), the mean emergency escape capability of people with influence personality type is the worst, and that of people with compliance type is the best; during virtual fire escape vs. baseline, Mean_SC and Mean_HR both increased very significantly (all p < 0.01), and participants were under stress during their virtual fire escape. There is a significant negative correlation between emergency escape capability and LF_increase_rate (p < 0.05), and a remarkably significant negative correlation between emergency escape capability and LF/HF_increase_rate (p < 0.01); the greater the increase rate of LF or LF/HF, the smaller the emergency escape capability, with excessive stress probably not being conducive to emergency escape. There is a very significant negative correlation between an individual’s emergency escape capability and the degree of familiarity with the Zijing Mountain subway station (p < 0.01). The findings provide references and suggestions on the emergency management and emergency evacuation for government and subway departments.