Smart-Guided Pedestrian Emergency Evacuation in Slender-Shape Infrastructure with Digital Twin Simulations

• Main Authors: Tianran Han, Jianming Zhao, Wenquan Li
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2020-11-01
• Series: Sustainability
• Subjects: pedestrian evacuation; smart guiding system; digital twin; cellular automata; numerical simulation
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/22/9701

Rapid exploitation of city underground space has led to the development of increasingly more underground slender-shape infrastructure like pedestrian tunnels, concourses, subway walkways, underground shopping streets, etc. Pedestrian evacuation in those public places in case of emergency can be disastrous if not properly guided. Therefore, it is important to understand how to enhance the evacuation efficiency through proper active guidance. In this study, we propose a digital twin based guiding system for pedestrian emergency evacuation inside a slender-shape infrastructure, aiming at enhancing the overall evacuation efficiency. Composition and calibration process of the guiding system are described, and a cellular automata based model is established to serve as the digital twin model. Two guidance strategies, namely traditional fixed guidance and smart guidance, are adopted by the digital twin to generate guidance instructions. A smart guidance strategy using a semi-empirical approach is proposed based on the understanding of the free movement and congested movement of pedestrian flow. Systems under different guiding strategies are compared and discussed over their effectiveness to promote excavation efficiency in different pedestrian population distribution settings. The simulation results show that a system under smart guidance tends to have shorter evacuation time (up to 23.8% time saving) and performs with more stability for pedestrian evacuations over the traditional fixed guided systems. The study provides insight for potential real applications of a similar kind.