Integration of micro- and macroscopic models for pedestrian evacuation simulation

Simulation of pedestrian evacuations of smart buildings in emergency is a powerful tool for building analysis, dynamic evacuation planning and real-time response to the evolving state of evacuations. Macroscopic pedestrian models are low-complexity models that are and well suited to algorithmic analysis and planning, but are quite abstract. Microscopic simulation models allow for a high level of simulation detail but can be computationally intensive. By combining micro- and macro- models we can use each to overcome the shortcomings of the other and enable new capability and applications for pedestrian evacuation simulation that would not be possible with either alone. We develop the EvacSim multi-agent pedestrian simulator and procedurally generate macroscopic flow graph models of building space, integrating micro- and macroscopic approaches to simulation of the same emergency space. By “coupling” flow graph parameters to microscopic simulation results, the graph model captures some of the higher detail and fidelity of the complex microscopic simulation model. The coupled flow graph is used for analysis and prediction of the movement of pedestrians in the microscopic simulation, and investigate the performance of dynamic evacuation planning in simulated emergencies using a variety of strategies for allocation of macroscopic evacuation routes to microscopic pedestrian agents. The predictive capability of the coupled flow graph is exploited for the decomposition of microscopic simulation space into multiple future states in a scalable manner. By simulating multiple future states of the emergency in short time frames, this enables sensing strategy based on simulation scenario pattern matching which we show to achieve fast scenario matching, enabling rich, real-time feedback in emergencies in buildings with meagre sensing capabilities.