Empirical Study of the Influence of Social Groups in Evacuation Scenarios

The effectsVon Krüchten, Cornelia of social groups on pedestrian dynamicsMüller, Frank , especially in evacuation scenariosSvachiy, Anton , have attractedWohak, Oliver some interest recently. However, due to the lack of reliableSchadschneider, Andreas empirical data, most of the studies focussed on modelling aspects. It was shown that social groups can have a considerable effect, e.g. on evacuation times. In order to test the model predictions we have performed laboratory experiments of evacuations with different types and sizes of the social groups. The experiments have been performed with pupils of different ages. Parameters that have been considered are (1) group size, (2) strength of intra-group interactions, and (3) composition of the groups (young adults, children, and mixtures). For all the experiments high-quality trajectories for all participants have been obtained using the PeTrack software. This allows for a detailed analysis of the group effects. One surprising observation is a decrease of the evacuation time with increasing group size.