A potential field approach to the modeling of route choice in pedestrian evacuation

This study proposes a potential field algorithm for formulating pedestrian route choice behavior during evacuation in individual-based models with discrete space representation. The potential field reflects the effect of the route distance, pedestrian congestion and route capacity on route choice. Numerical simulations show that the developed model can reproduce more route choice modes in a scenario compared with several existing models. Three groups of pedestrian evacuation experiments are conducted and the proposed model reproduces pedestrian route choices effectively. (paper)