Simulation-based heterogeneous pedestrian evacuation in subway stations

Pedestrian heterogeneity is one of the important factors affecting evacuation efficiency in subway stations. This paper mainly studies the impact of pedestrian heterogeneity on evacuation based on simulations. With the help of Massmotion, the Qingdao Jinggangshan Road subway station is modeled. The social force model is used as the pedestrian dynamics model and the minimum cost model is used as the decision-making mechanism of pedestrian path selection. The models are verified by comparing the field data with the corresponding simulation data. Fully considering the impact of different pedestrian attributes on evacuation efficiency, pedestrians are divided into three categories with different speed levels and three categories with different body size levels. Simulation experiments are carried out by adjusting the proportional relationship of the number of pedestrians with different attributes. The simulation results indicate that the larger the proportion of fast pedestrians under the same number of evacuees, the higher the evacuation efficiency to a certain extent. The evacuation efficiency could be reduced accordingly with the increase in the proportion of pedestrians with large body sizes. When the pedestrian density is large, the impact of pedestrian heterogeneity on evacuation cannot be clearly reflected. Moreover, the quantitative fitting relationship between evacuation time and pedestrian quantity could be obtained. This paper provides a theoretical basis for the determination of evacuation strategy for the heterogeneous crowd.