Analysis of Cooperation Behaviors and Crowd Dynamics during Pedestrian Evacuation with Group Existence

At most public places where large-scale events are held, the crowd as a pedestrian particle system is a mixture of individuals and groups rather than a pure collection of individuals. The interaction behaviors of pedestrians within the same group and between different groups are significantly disparate, which makes the crowd evacuation process more complex. To address this issue, a new pedestrian evacuation model is proposed incorporating the cellular automaton model and game theory. In the model, two game theory models named prisoner's dilemma and harmony game are applied to depict the interaction mechanism between pedestrians, and the decision-making of one pedestrian regarding route choice is subject to the environment factor and interaction payoffs between his neighbors. The influences of the intensity of interaction between pedestrians, the willingness to cooperate, the number of groups, the size of groups, and the initial distribution pattern of groups on the evacuation dynamics and cooperation evolution of the crowd are discussed. Simulation results show that it is beneficial to the evacuation efficiency and the formation of cooperation behaviors when pedestrians have a low intensity of interaction. As the willingness of large groups to cooperate is high, an increase in group' sizes and numbers can improve the cooperation fraction of the crowd but prolongs evacuation time. Groups in the crowd gathered together initially negatively affect the evacuation efficiency of the crowd.

Automated summary

This study proposes a new pedestrian evacuation model that combines cellular automaton model and game theory to describe the interaction behaviors between pedestrians during crowd evacuation. The simulation results show that low intensity of interaction among pedestrians is beneficial for evacuation efficiency and cooperation behavior formation; high willingness to cooperate in large groups can increase cooperation fraction but prolong evacuation time; initial gathering of groups in the crowd negatively affects evacuation efficiency.