Social Force Model Calibration for Preschool Children Evacuations Based on Multiscenario Experiments

The social force model has been widely used in simulating and analyzing pedestrian behavior. Like any agent-based models, the fidelity of the social force model largely relies on its numerical parameters that characterizes pedestrians’ behaviors. While parameters describing normal walking behaviors have been observed and calibrated in field experiments, those describing behaviors under abnormal and urgent circumstances have rarely been studied but are of practical significance in evaluating safety functionality of facilities, particularly those serving children or elders. Specifically aiming at providing a set of social force model parameters characterizing children’s behavior during evacuation, this study conducted evacuation experiments with preschool children under multiple emergency scenarios involving impaired-vision and flame scenarios and benchmarked against a normal scenario. A simulation-calibration framework is developed based on the social force model to calibrate evacuation behavior parameters by minimizing trajectory distance. The numerical approximation results indicate evident parameter disparities of preschool children from adults. This study can improve evacuation strategies and the designing/evaluation process of dedicated facilities layouts such as kindergarten corridors, activity rooms, and playgrounds.