Ronchi, E. ; Uriz F. Nieto ; Criel, X. ; Reilly, P. “Modelling large-scale evacuation of music festivals.”  Case Studies in Fire Safety, May 2016, vol.5, pp. 11-19

This article goes into detail about a case study that was looking at the use of multi-agent continuous evacuation modelling for representing large-scale evacuation scenarios at music festivals. Using the model Pathfinder, the researchers came up with three different scenarios to be simulated to explore the predictive capabilities of evacuation models during certain incidents. The scenarios varied in severity beginning with the evacuation of a few stages (~ 15,000 of 65,000 people), while continuing to grow in severity and the number of people needing to be evacuated. Variables such as physical abilities of people in the festival were acknowledged by using an approximate unimpeded walking speed distribution split up into two categories, “standard occupants” and people with locomotion impairments. The case study discussed in this article shows how multi-agent evacuation modelling tools are able to either explicitly or implicitly represent the behavioral factors that affect people’s decision making at a music festival if there were to be a complex evacuation scenario. Even though the impact of different initiators can be simulated in these models, they still have limited capabilities in explicitly representing complex behavioral variables present in a massive group of people. This relates directly to my topic so I think it will help me a lot with my research.