Investigating the Effect of Crowd Behavioral Patterns on the Safe Evacuation in High-rise Residential Buildings

Crowd behavior patterns in emergencies can affect the evacuation process. Familiarity with these behavioral approaches not only for designers of densely populated urban spaces (such as high-rise buildings, hospitals, public transportation stations, sports stadiums, cinemas, and theaters, etc.) to predict the behavior and movement of the population in hazardous conditions and calculate the actual evacuation time Comparing it with the standards required to evacuate people is an obligation and a necessity, but for managers and space users, for efficient management in critical situations (such as earthquakes, fires, bombings, and terrorist operations, etc.) is inevitable.

In this study, based on documentary studies, four different theories and approaches on population behavior in emergencies have been identified, and then by designing different scenarios and physical and behavioral simulations using hydraulic model, the impact of population behavioral approaches on The time of the total evacuation of a high-rise residential building in Tehran with 17th, 19th, 21st, 23rd, and 25th floors was examined and compared. To validate the data, the simulations were reviewed using pathfinder software based on the agent-based model.

A review of previous studies revealed four patterns of population behavior in emergencies, including mass panic, affiliation approach, normative approach, and social identity approach. According to the simulated results of the scenarios, the behavioral pattern of mass panic has the most negative impact on the evacuation process, and the normative approach is at the opposite point. On average, in communities operating based on mass panic behavior in an emergency, the total evacuation time of the building is 77.6% longer than the evacuation time of communities acting on a normative approach. It was also found that behavioral patterns that reduce building evacuation time significantly impact the evacuation process in taller buildings.

Accumulations of people with the behavioral phenomena of mass panic will cause human catastrophes, although progressive and humanitarian social behaviors such as helping strangers and people with disabilities do not necessarily reduce emergency evacuation time. Because the number of floors of a high-rise building directly relates to the impact of its occupantschr('39') behavioral patterns on the evacuation process, citizenship training and determining evacuation management strategies will significantly reduce the evacuation time of a high-rise building and increase emergency safety.