Citation

Zou Y, Xie J, Wang B. PLoS One 2016; 11(4): e0153388.

Affiliation

School of Science, Southwest University of Science and Technology, Mianyang, Sichuan, 621010, P. R. China.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2016, Public Library of Science)

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0153388

PMID

27055024

Abstract

In this paper, we have captured an underlying mechanism of emergence of collective panic in pedestrian evacuations by using a modification of the lattice-gas model. We classify the motion of pedestrians into two modes according to their moods. One is gentle (mode I), the other is flustered (mode II). First, to research the cause for crowd, we fix the motion modes of pedestrians and increase the proportion of pedestrians with motion mode II (ρII). The simulation results show that the pedestrians with motion mode II are lack of evacuation efficiency and cause more casualties. Further, we use the SIS (susceptible-infective-susceptible) model to describe the spreading of the panic mood. The system can be in the high-mix state when the infection probability λ is greater than a fuzzy threshold. In addition, the distances S from wounded people to the exit are researched, the number of wounded people gets maximum at the internal S = 5 ∼ 10, which is independent of ρII and λ. This research can help us to understand and prevent the emergence of collective panic and reduce wounds in the real evacuation.

Language: en