Experimental study on evacuation behaviour of passengers in a high-deck coach

A Chinese case study

Journal Article (2021)
Author(s)

Rong Huang (Chang'an University)

Xuan Zhao (Chang'an University)

Y. Yuan (TU Delft - Transport and Planning)

Qiang Yu (Chang'an University)

Chenyu Zhou (Chang'an University)

W. Daamen (TU Delft - Transport and Planning)

Transport and Planning
Copyright
© 2021 Rong Huang, Xuan Zhao, Y. Yuan, Qiang Yu, Chenyu Zhou, W. Daamen
DOI related publication
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physa.2021.126120
More Info
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Publication Year
2021
Language
English
Copyright
© 2021 Rong Huang, Xuan Zhao, Y. Yuan, Qiang Yu, Chenyu Zhou, W. Daamen
Transport and Planning
Volume number
579
Pages (from-to)
1-20
Reuse Rights

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Abstract

High-deck coaches form an essential component of mass transportation systems in China. Safe evacuation from high-deck coaches is facing dire challenges. However, evacuation behaviour from high-deck coaches has not been deeply understood yet. In this study, a novel conceptual framework is firstly proposed to capture the evacuation behaviour of coach passengers, and next based on which 22 full-scale experiments have been conducted to examine the effect of three selected factors: available exits, lighting conditions and age groups on the evacuation behaviour of Chinese passengers in a high-deck coach, in a systematic and quantitative way. Four performance indicators of evacuation behaviour, i.e., evacuation time, pre-evacuation time, flow rate and crowdedness, were collected and analysed. The results indicate that limited available exits and the dim lighting condition (less than 1 lux) significantly reduce the evacuation efficiency and increase the crowdedness within the aisle area regardless of the age groups. Compared to young students, the evacuation of middle-aged people is observed to have a significantly longer pre-evacuation time, lower evacuation efficiency, and higher level of crowdedness. In addition, young students’ pre-evacuation times are found to conform to the Weibull distribution, whereas middle-aged people’ pre-evacuation times could be modelled with the Loglogistic distribution. Empirical results of this study could be helpful for the improvement of the safety design of high-deck coaches, and provide valuable benchmarks for the development of coach evacuation behaviour and simulation models.