Effect of vertical grouping behavior on pedestrian evacuation efficiency

Grouping behavior is an important element which affects pedestrian group-moving behavior significantly. Current studies only give a few discussions on how grouping behavior affects pedestrian counter flow, while the effect of grouping behavior on evacuation flow is largely ignored. Here we propose a cellular automation model to describe pedestrian behavior under different grouping behavior in evacuation. By simulation we find that, comparing with other grouping behaviors, vertical grouping will block pedestrian transverse movement significantly, and this may cause pedestrians to appear as a two-peak arching distribution in the middle of evacuation and two-peak arching with a gap distribution near the end of evacuation. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time these phenomena have been presented. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.