Human evacuation modeling by the discrete element method

Abstract

The Discrete Element Method (DEM) was applied for human evacuation modeling in this study. The computational domain consisted of a room without any obstacles and a single exit and the evacuation of 100 subjects from the room was simulated. The typical phenomenon of jamming that is typical of such systems was reproduced computationally with such an approach. The evacuation process was observed to consist of the formation of a human cluster around the exit of the room followed by departure of subjects one at a time that created a significant bottleneck for the entire process. © 2011 IEEE.