Empirical investigation of child evacuation under non-emergency and emergency situations

In this study, we conducted a series of experiments to investigate child behavior during self-evacuation and guided evacuation under non-emergency and emergency situations. The properties of child flow dynamics are obtained through analysis of the experimental video recordings. It is found that under a non-emergency situation, the evacuation processes are orderly, and group and waiting behavior can be observed. Under an emergency situation, the evacuation processes become disorder, and running and pushing behaviors can be observed. Our analyses showed that the exit use is imbalanced under an emergency situation and that the guidance of teachers plays a positive role in the exit choice of children during an emergency evacuation process. The emergency degree has significant effects on the exit choice of children in self-evacuation. Our results also showed that the average evacuation time of children, flow rate, and average headway of the exit are less affected by the guidance of teachers and more affected by the emergency degree. The guidance of teachers affects some children’s individual evacuation time. The findings can assist in improvements in the daily management and evacuation strategies for children, as well as the development and validation of child simulation models.