Effect of turning angle on collective panic egress: Experimental evidences and pedestrian crowd simulation

With the increase of population around urban areas, major infrastructures are increasingly utilised by masses of people. Recent crowd disasters suggest that enhancing safety at those mass gathering places under emergencies poses a great challenge. In case of an emergency, following a man-made or natural disaster, people must be evacuated effectively and efficiently. However, while escaping under panic, interactions between people and physical features of the escape area could considerably impede the collective efforts of humans. Thus, proper considerations should be given to the plan and design of the features of escape areas, since adjustment of small structural feature or layout in the escape area can have a significant impact on collective pedestrian movements. Turning angle is one of those features of the escape area that must be designed carefully. Although several previous literature on crowd disasters have highlighted the effects of turning movements, limited qualitative and quantitative studies have addressed this phenomenon, particularly under panic conditions. In this work, we describe some recent experiments conducted at Monash University with panicking ants and how those data can be used to investigate the effect of turning angle on evacuation dynamics during the collective panic egress