Human behaviour and the optimisation of large-scale evacuation procedures in emergencies

Started: October 2016

Supervisor: Dr Arnab Majumdar

Description of Research

The provision of efficient and effective evacuation procedures is of paramount importance to the safety and lives of humans in dangerous situations. The impacts of human behaviour on the successfulness of evacuations have historically been overlooked. The behaviour of people in emergency scenarios was thought to be panic-driven and therefore irrational, or too difficult to understand. Only recently has the importance of understanding human behaviour during evacuations been recognised. The aim of this research is to look at the sociological and psychological understanding of human behaviour during evacuations, and decide how to implement those behavioural theories into computational egress models. Novel behavioural models enabling computational algorithms to be created will need to be developed in order to accomplish this aim.