New insights into discretization effects in cellular automata models for pedestrian evacuation

We develop a cellular automata model with finer discretization of space and higher walking velocities more than one cell. The model is used to simulate the evacuation process of pedestrians from a room with an exit. By simulation experiments, we find subtle effects of the discretization degree and walking velocities on the shape of the crowd near the exit, the evacuation time of each individual at different locations, and the evacuation efficiency of pedestrians formulated by two time indicators. We also investigate the relations between the exit flow and the exit width, formulated by the model, and compare the flow-width relations with those obtained by laboratory experiments in the existing literatures. This study is helpful for the validation and calibration of microscopic pedestrian models with discrete space representation and further narrowing the gap between these models' theory and their application to engineering. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.