Crowd evacuation simulation method combining the density field and social force model

Guiding crowd evacuation through changes in crowd density is one of the hot spots in crowd simulation research. Crowd evacuation methods can intuitively guide crowds to avoid high-density areas and improve evacuation efficiency. However, these methods are limited in accounting for the overall situation and lack realism. Therefore, this paper proposes a crowd evacuation method based on a density navigation algorithm. In the proposed method, a density navigation field model based on an equipotential field is first established. The model uses changes in the amount of charge to respond to changes in the density of the crowd, forming a density field. Second, this paper proposes a density navigation algorithm that guides the target selection in the process of crowd movement by calculating the density factor and distance factor. Finally, the density evacuation algorithm is combined with the social force model (SFM) to perform crowd evacuation simulation using a two-layer mechanism. The upper layer uses the density navigation algorithm for path planning, and the bottom layer uses the social force model to guide the evacuation. The experimental results show that the method effectively improves the crowd evacuation efficiency and can provide auxiliary decision support for large-scale group gathering events. (C) 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.