Study on the Performance of Upstream Obstacles Under Different Exit Loads

Obstacles “upstream” of the exit significantly impact evacuation efficiency and deserve attention. Based on the discrete cellular automaton model, this paper studies the impact of different obstacle settings on evacuation efficiency in different emergency levels under different exit loads. Through simulation, we found that at low emergency levels, the appearance of obstacles has little impact on evacuation efficiency, while at high emergency levels, the changes in evacuation efficiency vary greatly under different obstacle settings: when the exit is relatively wide (evacuation pressure is low) and has the “faster is faster” effect, obstacles upstream of the exit reduce the evacuation efficiency, and setting obstacles directly opposite of the safety exit has the most obvious impact on the evacuation efficiency; while when the exit is narrow (evacuation pressure is high) and has the “faster is slower” effect, appropriately setting obstacles can slightly improve the evacuation efficiency. Our findings help to understand the impact of obstacles on evacuation efficiency under different exit loads to set upstream obstacles reasonably. © 2025 by the authors.