Optimal guidance strategy for crowd evacuation with multiple exits: A hybrid multiscale modeling approach.

• The pedestrians cell transmission model is extended to simulate the pedestrian following behavior. • The leader movement is simulated by an improved social force model. • A multi-scale model is proposed to simulate the guided crowd dynamics. • A strategic guidance model including leader location plan and exit selection is proposed. • The proposed model can suggest the optimal number of leaders and the optimal exit selection. Guidance is an efficient crowd management measure used to save lives in emergencies because it can reduce the disorientation of pedestrians. This study investigates an optimal guidance strategy for large-scale crowd evacuations. To increase computational efficiency, a pedestrian cell transmission model is extended to create a rapid simulation of guided crowd dynamics. To solve the conflicts between the limited guidance capacity and the desire to improve evacuation efficiency, a strategic guidance model is proposed, which generates a leader location and exit selection plan. A simulation algorithm is proposed to integrate a pedestrian following model and strategic guidance model based on the follower-leader interaction. Finally, a hybrid multiscale approach for modeling guided crowd evacuations is established to evaluate the performance of the guidance strategy. The experimental results show that the required CPU time of the proposed model is much less than that of the microscopic models. Because the number of leaders is minimized and the exit is selected by taking both risk and congestion into account, the obtained guidance strategy can realize the full use of guidance capacity, information confusion reduction and uniform exit usage, all of which contribute to a reduction in evacuation time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]