Modelling and Analysis on Emergency Evacuation from Metro Stations

Efficient calculation on passenger evacuation performances under emergencies is crucial to the planning, design, and operation of metro systems as it is closely related to the safety of human lives. Four calculation methodologies including the China CDM, NFPA 130, control volume, and M/G/c/c models and a multiagent-based simulation approach are employed to calculate the evacuation time under a given number of evacuees in different application backgrounds by investigating impact factors and strategies of evacuation as well as moving speed of evacuees. The M/G/c/c model and multiagent-based simulation approach are also used to identify the bottleneck of evacuation in metro stations. A case study for the Xizhimen metro station in Beijing is carried out to validate the effectiveness of these methodologies to planners, designers, and operators in practice. The results show that the former two methodologies are concise quantitative methods while the latter ones are more capable of assessing the whole process and details of evacuation.