A Review on the Performance of an Obstacle Near an Exit on Pedestrian Crowd Evacuation

In a pioneering work in Nature journal, a counter-intuitive prediction that escape rates of people under panic conditions will be enhanced if an obstacle such as a column or a barrier is placed on the “upstream” side of an exit was demonstrated through a simulation model. However, the prediction lacked empirical verification. Despite the substantial works in this topic in the past decade, there is currently a lack of knowledge on how and to what extent the obstacle near an exit can enhance the pedestrian outflow at the bottlenecks during emergency escape. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to present a critical review on the performance of an obstacle near an exit and identify future research directions. It is found that although there is a general consensus on the beneficial effect of an obstacle, there is a large uncertainty on the situations on which the positive effect of obstacle could be observed. In addition, verification of the model’s prediction with empirical data with humans is still largely unexplored. There is no clear established relationship between the exit width, obstacle distance and obstacle size/shape. Also, quantitative understanding of the nature of the clogging transition due to obstacle is a challenging task. Further, researchers have questioned the implementation of such obstacles at bottlenecks in real life scenario. A systematic approach of optimizing architectural adjustments that enhances escape dynamics of pedestrians’ crowd in indoor and outdoor public spaces needs to be conducted in future.

• Record URL:
  • https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssci.2018.11.016
• Record URL:
  • http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0925753518300675
• Availability:
  • Find a library where document is available. Order URL: http://worldcat.org/issn/09257535
• Supplemental Notes:
  • © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Abstract reprinted with permission of Elsevier.
• Authors:
  • Shiwakoti, Nirajan
  • Shi, Xiaomeng
  • 0000-0002-8511-3295
  • Ye, Zhirui
• Publication Date: 2019-3

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Web
• Features: References;
• Pagination: pp 54-67
• Serial:
  • Safety Science
  • Volume: 113
  • Issue Number: 0
  • Publisher: Elsevier
  • ISSN: 0925-7535
  • Serial URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/09257535

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Behavior; Emergencies; Evacuation; Mathematical models; Pedestrians; Walking
• Subject Areas: Pedestrians and Bicyclists; Safety and Human Factors;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01688538
• Record Type: Publication
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: Dec 17 2018 10:27AM