The impact of a pedestrian obstacle at different times at the bottleneck on evacuation

Research on bottleneck obstacles mainly focuses on the significant impact of obstacles that differ from pedestrians on evacuation efficiency. However, there is still insufficient research on pedestrians who temporarily stop as obstacles and those who encounter temporary obstacles at different times at bottleneck. To address this gap, we conducted a series of experiments to explore the impact of a stationary pedestrian who stop at different times at the bottleneck, acting as an obstacle on evacuation dynamics in room evacuation. The trajectory of pedestrians shows that they employ different obstacle avoidance methods, depending on whether they are aware of the obstacle pedestrian in advance. The presence of an obstacle pedestrian at different times significantly affects the instantaneous and average speeds of pedestrians. Both evacuation time and time headway increase when there is a stationary pedestrian obstacle in front of the bottleneck. Analysis of density profiles reveals that the presence of the obstacle pedestrian reduces the average density in front of the exit due to an increase in evacuation time. In addition, when the obstacle is known in advance, the decrease in density at the exit is more pronounced. Our study contributes to understanding how pedestrians respond to temporary or pre-existing pedestrian obstacles and their impact on evacuation dynamics. This understanding is crucial for developing more accurate emergency plans and providing valuable data support.