An agent-based modeling approach to collaborative classrooms evacuation process

Human behavior and the environment's characteristics have proven to play an important role within the evacuation process as they can facilitate a shorter evacuation time. The collaborative classrooms represent a now-a-days architectural trend as, when compared to the classical classrooms, they provide a friendlier space for learning, allowing students to easily exchange information and knowledge among them and to increase their ability of working as a team in completing the assigned tasks during a class. In this context, the evacuation process from this type of classrooms is discussed. A simulated evacuation has been conducted using 18 students, having ages between 19 and 21 years old, in a classical and in a collaborative classroom, and several aspects related to the evacuation process, such as: speed, dealing with obstacles, ad-hoc guided intervention, have been empirically measured. Considering the observations from the field, an agent-based model has been created, calibrated and used for simulations. The model is highly configurable and be adapted to various classroom configurations. Five types of collaborative classroom configurations have been used and hierarchized base on their evacuation time efficiency when the exit doors' position is given. The presence of jumped and bypassed obstacles and the volunteer guidance have been analyzed. Their impact on the evacuation time is discussed within the paper, along with the study's limitations. Based on the simulations, it has been observed that, the evacuation time in the case of the collaborative classroom in the presence of one exit door has been, on average, with 6.02% smaller than in the case of a non-collaborative classroom. Also, the presence of two evacuation doors in a collaborative classroom and a proper desk placement can reduce, on average, the evacuation time with up to 36.51% when compared to one-door evacuation situation.