BUILDING EVACUATION SIMULATION CONSIDERING BOTH PEDESTRIAN EVACUEES AND VEHICLES IN METROPOLITAN AREA

Abstract

 Some evacuation routes from a building may consist of sidewalks and crosswalks. In this work, the risk of street crossing by pedestrian evacuees is explored by our simulation experimets and safe road crossing manners are discussed. It has been found that there is a chance of some portion of pedestrian evacuees colliding with oncoming vehicles on a crosswalk before they reach the other side of the crosswalk due to a short green signal period for pediestrians. It is hence proposed that for realizing safe street corssing by pedestrian evacuees, the period for both pedestrians and vehicles to stop simultaneously should be set longer than present to provide an ample time for all of the pedestrian evacuees to cross the street completely and the green signal period for vehicles should be set shorter by an amount in which vehicle traffic congestion on the street is not cuased so that many more pedestrian evacuees can cross the street in each green signal period for pedestrians which in trun to reduce the number of pedestrian evacuess in a crossing waiting area who may block the evacuation route from the building to the crosswalk.