Evacuation Guidance and Agent Behavior in Evacuation Simulations

Evacuation guidance and announcements are important for occupants to exit buildings during an emergency. However, it has been reported that such guidance and announcements have not been used effectively in real cases. The National Institute of Standards and Technology published reports on the World Trade Center collapse on September 11, 2001. The reports include data on evacuation behaviors of occupants and how they obtained information during their egress. After the Great East Japan Earthquake, the Japanese government conducted an investigation into how people behaved during that disaster. The evacuation behaviors of people are similar in both cases. The behaviors are categorized into three groups: instant evacuation, evacuation after tasks are completed, and emergent evacuation. We present a system in which evacuation guidance is implemented as a form of agent communication and show how the content of guidance alters the escape time. (C) 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.