English

Can cooperation slow down emergency evacuations?

Physics and Society 2015-06-11 v1

Abstract

We study the motion of pedestrians through obscure corridors where the lack of visibility hides the precise position of the exits. Using a lattice model, we explore the effects of cooperation on the overall exit flux (evacuation rate). More precisely, we study the effect of the buddying threshold (of no--exclusion per site) on the dynamics of the crowd. In some cases, we note that if the evacuees tend to cooperate and act altruistically, then their collective action tends to favor the occurrence of disasters.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1209.2826,
  title  = {Can cooperation slow down emergency evacuations?},
  author = {Emilio N. M. Cirillo and Adrian Muntean},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1209.2826},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1203.4852

R2 v1 2026-06-21T22:04:16.148Z