Enhancing evacuation efficiency: Investigating how luggage influences exit strategies and crowd dynamics

Luggage carriers as an important part of pedestrians in public transportation hubs may greatly affect the crowd movement especially in emergencies, but have been seldom considered in existing evacuation models. In this work, we adjusted the spatial structure of pedestrians and the forces from luggage to simulate luggage-laden pedestrians. By introducing an exit selection model and rules for luggage-laden pedestrians, it can reflect the exit selection strategy of the crowd with luggage. The effectiveness and performance of the model was evaluated by comparing the simulation results with experimental data and those from other evacuation models. Subsequently, the model was used to simulate the evacuation process in different scenarios. It was found that setting a dedicated exit for luggage-laden pedestrians is unnecessary and will exacerbate the degree of conflict when there is no crowd diversion before the exit. As the passenger flow increases, the impact of luggage on crowd evacuation becomes more and more obvious, resulting in a longer evacuation time for higher proportion of luggage under the same pedestrian numbers. When the passenger flow is high, smaller distance between two exits will reduce the evacuation efficiency. Besides, frequent change on the expected exit during the movement process is not conducive to crowd evacuation. If pedestrians can complete the exit selection at a position from where the distance to the exit is larger than a certain value, the total evacuation time can be reduced. The larger the passenger flow is, the farther this distance should be. It is hoped that the relevant findings of this work can provide guidance and reference for public safety and emergency management in transportation hubs.