A tool for earthquake risk assessment definition including human behavioral aspects: EPES - Earthquake Pedestrians Evacuation Simulator

The earthquake risk assessment at urban scale does not consider human behaviors during both earthquake and evacuation phases. However, understanding interactions between people and post-event environment becomes essential in determining how behaviors influence inhabitants’ safety levels. This study follows this approach and proposes an agent-based earthquake pedestrians evacuation simulator. Real events analysis allows to define phases and rules in pedestrians evacuation; the social force model and a multi-agent architecture are used in order to develop a simulator. Consequently, the software EPES (Earthquake Pedestrians Evacuation Simulator) is implemented. Results firstly show the noticed behaviors discussion, posing attention on evacuation paths choice; interactions between man and environment are defined. Additionally, first software simulation validation about motion speed in evacuations and path choice are offered. EPES is proposed for evaluating probable pedestrians’ choices in different scenarios, and checking solutions for reduction of interferences between the environment and the evacuation process.