An individual cognitive evacuation behaviour model for agent-based simulation: a case study of a large outdoor event

Route selection is a complex issue in simulating the pedestrian’s walking behaviour during the evacuation. In many current studies, the agent-based model has been widely used to simulate the individualized behaviour, and growing concern is given to the cognitive aspects in route selection. However, the influence of incomplete spatial knowledge and the preferences for different routing strategies has not been fully considered. To represent more reliable route choice by different pedestrians, this study presents an individual cognitive evacuation behaviour model which is mainly focusing on the individual differences in routing strategy and spatial knowledge. The model consists of two major components, namely the multiple routing strategies and personalized spatial cognitive road network. Based on a review of the previous studies, the potential factors that may affect the evacuation behaviour were discussed. The quantitative relationships between these potential factors and the pedestrian’s routing preference, as well as the possibilities of recognizing different roads, were explored using the regression method. As a case study, the proposed model was implemented using the data collected from a field survey of a real outdoor event. When applied in an agent-based simulation, the implemented model will support more reliable simulation of route choices corresponding to the pedestrians’ behaviour in the real event.