Abstract:

To investigate pedestrian evacuation under the sudden terrorist attack, an evacuation model is established for pedestrians taking into account the terrorist attack mode. The terrorist can take two strategies including attacking the nearest pedestrian and attacking the crowd in the model. The evacuation time, casualties and location distribution in various scenarios under different attack modes are analyzed. The results show that pedestrians need to maintain a proper escape intention when avoiding the terrorist. The closer the initial position of the terrorists to the exit, the greater the number of casualties and the longer the evacuation time. The effect of exit location on evacuation is closely related to the attack mode and the width of the exit. In addition, if the terrorist attacks the crowd, the horizontal arrangement of obstacles increases the evacuation time while reducing the total number of casualties. If the terrorist attacks the nearest individual, the existence of obstacles delays the evacuation process. Furthermore, the strategy of attacking the crowd causes more casualties when the number of terrorists is smaller, while the strategy of attacking the nearest individual is more harmful when the number of terrorists is large.

Key words: emergency evacuation, cellular automaton, terrorist attack, pedestrian safety, casualties