Predicting the Spread of Panic among People when Evacuating a Building during a Fire


Annotation:

The possibilities of modern technologies for predicting the spread of panic among people when evacuating a building during a fire are considered. The analysis of well-known studies is presented, which showed that in view of the extreme importance and social danger of panic, studying the mechanism of its development is an important scientific task. It is aimed at solving one of the main fire safety tasks — ensuring safe evacuation of people from the building during a fire.
It is established that susceptibility to panic situations primarily depends on the type of temperament of a person. Guided by this, general principles were developed for constructing the methodology of predicting the spread of panic among people when evacuating a building during a fire. It is established that the main method for studying the mechanism of panic development — simulation modeling. It allows to work with a large number of components, and be more realistic, as well as reproduce various scenarios of development without endangering people. Based on the AnyLogic simulator, a simulation system-dynamic model of human temperament was developed, which allows determining quantitative values of parameters characterizing the wave of panic spread among people in case of fire in the building. The combinatorics model was developed for predicting all the likely scenarios of the spread of panic. The results of a computational experiment compiled based on the results of simulation modeling and combinatorics are analyzed. The most dangerous scenario was identified, characterized by the maximum rate of spread of panic among people when evacuating a building during a fire. 
The results of study can be used to clarify the methodology for calculating the time of evacuation of people from a building in case of fire, as well as to assess the efficiency of the application of existing fire safety measures. 

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DOI: 10.24000/0409-2961-2020-10-77-82
Year: 2020
Issue num: October
Keywords : propagation velocity prediction methodology simulation modeling fire in a building panic among people evacuation during a fire temperament of a person combinatorics scenario development fire safety measures
Authors:
  • S.V. Kalachin
    S.V. Kalachin
    S.V. Kalachin, Dr. Sci. (Eng.), Prof., s.v.kalachin@mail.ru National Research Mordovia State University, Saransk, Russia