High-rise buildings usually have more complex architectural structures and hold more people than single-storey buildings. Currently, crowd management under emergent conditions, especially rapid evacuations of high-rise buildings, is a worldwide problem. In this study, a bio-inspired simulation technology extracted from a cell migration process, namely Intelligent Decision System (IDPS), was used to model the dynamic evacuation of high-rise buildings and calculate the evacuation time for different scenarios. This work was motivated by the comparability between the pedestrian movement behavior and cell migration process. Specific structure information of high architecture was also described in IDPS. A case study was done about evacuation simulation of a 12-storey teaching building in China University of Geosciences in Beijing. The simulation results showed that evacuation time varied with different parameters, such as density threshold, interaction probability, walking speed, population distribution, and stair width. With the proper density threshold and good interaction probability, the load balance of staircases and exits can be improved. For staircases with high utilization ratios, it was recommended that the evacuation process can be accelerated by widening the staircases appropriately. Finally, the impact of initial number of evacuees at each floor level was also analyzed in view of safety management.
Leader Election Requires Logarithmic Time in Population Protocols
