Elsevier

Journal of Transport Geography

Volume 26, January 2013, Pages 12-17
Journal of Transport Geography

Understanding pedestrian crowd panic: a review on model organisms approach

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2012.08.002Get rights and content

Abstract

Understanding how crowds behave during collective displacement is at the heart of both pedestrian traffic engineering and ‘movement ecology’. Perhaps the most critical reason for studying collective human dynamics under emergency/panic conditions is the lack of complementary data to develop and validate an explanatory model. A little used alternative is to study non-human model organisms. In this paper, we review experiences in using non-human organisms to study crowd panic in the literature. We then highlight the potential contribution that research with biological entities could make to understand the complex pedestrian behaviour and the enhancement of pedestrian safety during emergency/panic conditions. We also emphasise that understanding of behavioural similarities and dissimilarities between humans and animals is required for developing a good experimental design aimed to study collective behaviour. A generic model that could describe the common underlying mechanisms of crowd behaviour among organisms of different body sizes is identified as future challenge.

Highlights

► Collective movement has been observed in animals besides humans. ► We highlight potential areas that can be explored with animal models. ► Behavioural similarities and dissimilarities may have an effect on experimental design. ► Generic model capturing crowd behaviour among broader organisms is a challenge.

Introduction

Organisms that live in groups often move together and create traffic. Ant trails, wildebeest migrations, locust swarms, and pedestrian crowds on city footpaths are examples of such traffic. Understanding how crowds behave during collective displacement is at the heart of both ‘movement ecology’ (Holden, 2006) and pedestrian traffic engineering (Helbing et al., 2000). Although most collective movements are routine, survival and fitness may be strongly affected by occasional but potentially perilous crowd panics, such as escape from predators, evacuations of nests in the face of flooding, or flight of people from burning buildings. Human crowds have been studied during evacuations as long ago as the 1930s (Kholshevnikov and Samoshin, 2008), but the complex interactions between escaping individuals and their social and physical environments have made it difficult to obtain a full theoretical understanding of the phenomenon, and the practical problem of enhancing safety under emergency conditions still exists (Helbing et al., 2000, Shiwakoti et al., 2011). Numerous incidents have been reported (Still, 2011) in which overcrowding has resulted in injuries and death during emergency situations. Modelling and empirical study of pedestrian behaviour under emergency conditions is imperative to assist planners and managers of emergency response to analyse and assess safety precautions for those situations.

The use of term panic and emergencies in this study refer to situations in which individuals have limited information and vision (due to high crowd density and short time for egress), and which result in physical competition and pushing behaviour. This is different than the orderly evacuation. There have been many instances in the past where people have displayed physical competition and pushing behaviour during emergency evacuation, as well as instances where people behaved in much calmer way. The focus on the former issue is more critical.

To study and represent the complex phenomena of crowd movement, investigations have been carried out by researchers using different approaches. Fig. 1 shows a classification of the existing research which highlights a higher order grouping depending on whether studies have used mathematical modelling and simulation (Okazaki and Matsushita, 1993, Still, 2000, Helbing et al., 2000, Hoogendoorn and Bovy, 2002, Schadschneider, 2002, Klüpfel, 2003, Hughes, 2003, Kretz, 2007, Asano et al., 2009, Shiwakoti et al., 2011), experimental studies (Galea and Galparsoro, 1994, Proulx, 1995, Daamen and Hoogendoorn, 2003, Ko et al., 2007) or drawn on socio-psychology approaches (Quarantelli, 1957, Kelley et al., 1965, Mawson, 2007). Mathematical modelling and simulation can be further classified as microscopic, mesoscopic and macroscopic depending on the level of detail. It is to be noted that discrete models (microscopic) may not be analytically tractable while continuum models (macroscopic) may sometimes be analytically tractable (Hughes, 2003). The experimental studies have been carried out mostly with human subjects, while few studies have focussed on non-human organisms (Altshuler et al., 2005, Shiwakoti et al., 2011) to study collective dynamics. Crowd studies from a socio-psychological (sociology) perspective have been carried out over many years and the focuses have been to study the crowd characteristics (collective behaviour) and their mental state in a given situation. It is not the focus of this paper to review all the approaches but rather to examine the use of non-human organisms in the study of pedestrian crowds under panic conditions. There is currently a lack of knowledge on how and to what extent the study of the collective dynamics of non-human biological organisms can be applied to the study of crowd panic. In this paper, we will examine the viability of performing experiments with non-human organisms to study pedestrian traffic under emergency conditions.

The paper is organised as follows. The next section reviews the empirical studies with biological entities and their relevance to human crowds. We then highlight the potential areas where such studies may provide insight into the crowd panic followed by limitation of animal models. The final section presents the conclusions and recommendations for future research.

Section snippets

Animal models and their relevance to pedestrian crowd

The bulk of the literature is restricted to the study of normal evacuation processes or normal (non-panic) pedestrian dynamics. Models of pedestrian behaviour in panic situations rarely have complementary empirical data to validate the model’s prediction, so we may not want to rely entirely on mathematical models before scaling up to an applied, real world situation. Even the researchers responsible for developing the few existing models of crowd panic have identified the need for more rigorous

Implications

Animal-inspired solutions to crowding problems might be especially useful, in that these living creatures are, literally, more life-like than equations, and may be expected to behave and interact with complexities that may not be fully captured in mathematical models. Any common features of dynamical behaviour of non-human organisms and human pedestrians could make these organisms a potentially valuable resource for testing models of panic behaviour and designs to ameliorate crowd disasters.

Limitation

Although there are numerous benefits of using model organisms in the study of collective behaviour of humans (as highlighted above), the limitations of the non-human biological organisms should be properly considered when selecting a particular organism for an experimental design. As observed from the literature, proper understanding of the phenomena to be studied and the knowledge of particular model organisms is important in creating good experimental design. For example, ants have been

Conclusion

Owing to the scarcity of data on human panics, results from empirical experiments on non-human biological entities show promise in providing reassurance that the model correctly identifies the essential features of solutions that are efficacious and improve the safety of pedestrians. However, the taxonomic differences between the non-human biological organisms and pedestrian should not be ignored and the results should be interpreted based on that particular context or study. In the future,

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions which helped to improve this manuscript.

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