Modeling and Questionnaire Survey for Effective Regulated Egress Based on Level of Discomfort

Regulated egress is often conducted after large events to avoid extreme congestion at stations around event venues. In regulated egress, people are divided into several groups and egress in order. By controlling the number of groups and the time interval between each group’s egress, managers can mitigate the congestion at the stations. In this study, a mathematical model was developed to identify the effective regulated egress. level of discomfort (LOD) was used to evaluate the performance of the regulated egress instead of the total egress time. LOD is the product of the function of density and duration of egress and represents the accumulated discomfort through the egress. A questionnaire survey was conducted to determine the LOD function parameters. Under the assumed conditions, the results of the calibrated model indicated that effective regulated egress could be conducted by dividing the people into two or three groups, which is presumable in terms of management in the real world. In addition to the main result for the effective number of groups, the robustness of the model was confirmed by comparing the results of the two types of LOD functions. In other words, the effective number of groups does not strongly depend on the detailed form of the LOD functions.