Study on the optimization of obstacle layout for the improvement of pedestrian egress

公共区域的有效行人疏散至关重要，特别是在奥运会等大型活动期间。设置障碍物可以是一种解决方案，因为一些研究表明，在出口前设置障碍物可以提高效率。然而，由于其他相反的实验结果，这个想法是有争议的。在此基础上，提出了障碍物影响行人疏散效率的一般化机制，即根据障碍物布局与行人冲突水平的匹配程度，障碍物对行人疏散效率的影响分为三个阶段，分别对应于较低的疏散效率、稳定的疏散效率和较高的疏散效率。这三个阶段将通过实验验证，并通过建模和仿真再现。研究结果将用于评估和改进障碍物设计，以提高疏散效率。

Efficient pedestrian evacuation in public areas is vital especially during large events like the Olympics. Placing obstacle can be one solution because some studies showed that setting an obstacle before the exit can improve the efficiency. However, this idea is controversial due to other opposite experimental results. Reflecting on the controversy, I would propose generalized influencing mechanism of obstacle.To be specific, depending on the match of obstacle layout and pedestrian conflict level, the obstacle influence has three phases that correspond to lower, stable and higher evacuation efficiency. The three phases will be validated by experiments and reproduced by modeling and simulation. Results will be used to evaluate and improve obstacle design for higher evacuation efficiency.