Evacuation from transportation tools is receiving increasing attention due to its high risk and complexity. However, as a crucial travel mode, high-deck coaches, have been overlooked, lacking a dedicated evacuation model, let alone exploratory simulation analyses. This work proposes an innovative high-deck coach evacuation model framework, where three intertwined modules are developed to separately delineate the strategic, tactical and operational passenger evacuation behaviours. In the strategic behaviour module, the Cox-Weibull hazard duration model is introduced to capture the pre-evacuation times of passengers so that both the distribution characteristics and the dependence on the proximity to the target exit are encapsulated. In the tactical and operational behaviour modules, elaborate behavioural rules are designed and coupled with Cumulative Prospect Theory to comprehensively incorporate the typical behavioural characteristics and decision-making factors of passengers. The framework is validated with empirical data from various scenarios and proven to significantly outperform the state-of-the-art passenger evacuation model. It is found that the CWM substantially improves the prediction accuracy of the framework compared with the Weibull probabilistic distribution. Overtaking behaviour significantly affects passenger evacuations, but does not induce any benefit for the overall system. This study offers valuable tools and insights for high-deck coach evacuation simulation and management.

Pedestrian tactical choices and operational movement in evacuations essentially pertain to decision-making under risk and uncertainty. However, in microscopic evacuation models, this attribute has been greatly overlooked, even lacking a methodology to delineate the related decision characteristics (bounded rationality and risk attitudes), let alone their effects on evacuation processes. This work presents an innovative two-layer floor field cellular automaton model framework, where three intertwined sub-modules respectively dedicated to modelling the exit choice, the locomotion movement and the exit-choice changing behaviours are proposed and integrated as an entity. By introducing various decision-making elements computed by the proposed algorithm, Cumulative Prospect Theory (CPT) is proposed for the first time to model the exit choice and locomotion decision-making under risk and uncertainty. In the exit-choice changing module, attractive and repulsive forces are invented to jointly describe the tendency to revisit the routing decision. Each sub-module and the whole framework are validated in manifold indoor environments. The simulation results of the modules with CPT accord with the empirics from the evacuation experiments and are superior over those from the state-of-the-art models. The degree of rationality and risk attitudes are proven to have significant impacts on tactical and operational decisions. Furthermore, irrational behaviour in decision-making is not variably detrimental to locomotion efficiency of pedestrians. The proposed framework can serve as an elegant tool to predict pedestrian dynamics. The behavioural findings shed new light on understanding and modelling the tactical and operational decisions in evacuations.

Numerous evacuation performance data for the utilization in evacuation modelling and simulations have been established for the conventional/widely studied scenarios, such as building evacuation scenarios. However, such data are typically scarce for a new scenario in literature — evacuation from high-deck coaches. This paper fulfills this gap by presenting empirical high-deck coach evacuation data-sets that can be used for model configuration and validation. To this end, firstly, five essential and commonly used performance metrics, i.e., evacuation time, flow rate, alighting time gap, velocity on stairways and exit choice, were collected and derived from two series of controlled experiments with 7 and 22 runs that involved 44 and 96 participants respectively. Then, all these datasets were structured in the distribution form, based on which three critical behavioural insights are revealed regardless of the evacuation conditions (the types of high-deck coaches, lighting conditions, and age groups). First, the evacuation behaviour in normal (experimental) conditions conforms to a multi-stage pattern (a modified four-stage pattern, i.e., reaction, acceleration, fluctuation and saturation stages). Second, the instantaneous flow rate can be well captured by the Burr, Loglogistic and Lognormal distributions, and the alighting time gap can be represented by the Burr distribution. Third, more than 50% of passengers evacuate through the rear door in the front-and-rear-door evacuations. The frequency of choosing the front door is found to shift towards the direction of the rear door compared to the ideal results (based on the shortest distance calculation) with a magnitude of approximately 1.95 seat rows. The presented data-sets are valuable resources for the development of high-deck coach evacuation models. The empirical findings promote the understanding upon the evacuation behaviour of high-deck coach passengers.