Incorporating game theory for modeling evacuees' behavior in building evacuation

Rapid urbanization has caused the erection of complex high-rise buildings in many cities. In view of the complex setting inside such buildings, researchers have developed many sophisticated computer models to simulate the egress process of occupants so as to assist building designers to establish effective evacuation system in buildings, which is adopted to mitigate the ill-effect under emergency situations. However, the issue on occupant behavior has not been adequately addressed due to the uncertainties and complexities. In a complex building consisting of many functional spaces such as rooms, corridors, stairs, lobbies, etc, the occupant's movement process from his/her initial position to the safety destination will involve a series of exit selection actions. Choice of exit is one of the most important aspects impact on the evacuation of occupants from the dangerous zone. Under emergent situations, each evacuee is supposed to strive to leave the building as soon as possible. Obviously, congestion will occur at the exits of a zone to another one. The egress system including all the passages and exits can be regarded as resources. Thus, evacuees will compete for the resources for his/her own goal. If they act in rational way, competition among evacuees will affect each one's judgment on exit choice. Evacuees perceive the actions of other evacuees and the environmental situations, and interact with their cognition to decide their escape route. This phenomenon can be explained by game theory. This article presents a game theory based method for modeling the exit choice behavior of evacuees. Non-cooperative game theory is adopted to deal with how intelligent individuals interact with others. The simulation results demonstrate that the evacuees' interaction can affect the evacuation pattern and clearance time of a multi-exit zone.