Abstract:

To investigate the movement conflicts caused by pedestrians driven by panic and the avoidance of locally high-density areas,as well as their impact on crowd evacuation efficiency, the dynamic effects of the distance of pedestrians to the exit, surrounding crowd density and emotional infection on individual panic were considered. In addition, the detouring behavior of pedestrians to avoid the high-density areas and the mutual pushing behavior during evacuation are incorporated. A panic propagation model was constructed based on SFM, and crowding avoidance force and pushing force were introduced to develop a crowd evacuation model considering panic emotion and crowding avoidance behavior. The results indicate that moderate crowding avoidance behavior during evacuation can enhance evacuation efficiency to a certain extent, whereas excessively strong interactions amplify movement conflicts and the accumulation of pushing forces, thereby increasing the risk of stampedes. In low-density evacuation scenarios, individual panic levels are mainly influenced by the distance to exit, and the crowding avoidance force remains relatively weak. In contrast, under high-density situations, the dominant role of exit distance diminishes. The propagation of panic emotions interacts with crowd density to form a “density-emotion” coupled feedback, which significantly increases pedestrian crowding avoidance force and pushing intensity. During evacuation, the maximum crowding avoidance force of pedestrians first increases and then decreases. In the middle and late stages of evacuation, when pushing becomes intense, a larger ankle joint torque weight can significantly reduce the probability of falling.

Key words: panic, crowd avoidance behavior, crowd evacuation, social force model (SFM), emotional infection, pedestrian falls