Experimental study on the evading behavior of pedestrians encountering those who go against the flow

In building evacuations, there exist scenarios where a group of firefighters or emergency managers move against the evacuation flow to carry out rescue work. Understanding the mechanisms of evading behavior of the evacuees under walking and running states encountering the emergency responders is vital to reduce the conflicts among pedestrians moving in different directions and improve the evacuation efficiency. In this study, the character parameters of the evading behavior, including initiation evading distances, preferred areas, are investigated experimentally for evaders under walking and running states. The entire evading process was divided into three stages (the pre-evade stage, the evading stage and the post-evade stage). The results reveal that the evading distance and the probability of starting to evade follow an exponential decay. Evaders in both walking and running states tend to enter evading areas that are closer in distance as well as those with higher area occupancy rates. There is no evidence suggesting that the average pedestrian speeds in areas affect their selection of evading areas. The available distance in the evading direction and the sideways acceleration of the evader both adhere to an exponential decay function. The study aims to enhance the understanding of pedestrian dynamics for effective crowd management and emergency response operations.