The effect of a static pedestrian as an exit obstacle on evacuation

Abstract Building exit as a bottleneck structure is the last and the most congested stage in building evacuation. It is well known that obstacles at the exit affect the evacuation process, but few researchers pay attention to the effect of stationary pedestrians (the elderly with slow speed, the injured, and the static evacuation guide) as obstacles at the exit on the evacuation process. This paper explores the influence of the presence of a stationary pedestrian as an obstacle at the exit on the evacuation from experiments and simulations. We use a software, Pathfinder, based on the agent-based model to study the effect of ratios of exit width (D) to distance (d) between the static pedestrian and the exit, the asymmetric structure by shifting the static pedestrian upward, and types of obstacles on evacuation. Results show that the evacuation time of scenes with a static pedestrian is longer than that of scenes with an obstacle due to the unexpected hindering effect of the static pedestrian. Different ratios of D/d have different effects on evacuation efficiency. Among the five D/d ratios in this paper, the evacuation efficiency is the largest when d is equal to 0.75 D, and the existence of the static pedestrian has a positive impact on evacuation in this condition. The influence of the asymmetric structure of the static pedestrian on evacuation efficiency is affected by D/d. This study can provide a theoretical basis for crowd management and evacuation plan near the exit of complex buildings and facilities.