Multi-Agent Simulation Model for Evacuation of Care Homes and Hospitals for Elderly and People with Disabilities in Motion

The progressive population aging provokes an increase of importance in safety aspects for the elderly and the people with disabilities that are housed in care homes and hospitals. Current regulations denote an inadequate approach to safety problems connected to possible evacuation due to events like earthquakes, floods, fires. The law approach implicates that patients are directly carried out by health workers assistants in evacuation. However, many patients can autonomously evacuate, helped by specific facilities for way finding and not assisted by the medical staff. Our research is intended to design “guidance” system for these categories, and to inquiry how these facilities interact with people and influence their motion. The understanding and the simulation of behaviors of this category become essential in order to reach these goal.. This work proposes a multi-agent model for evacuation simulation, based on the Social Force motion approach and on experimental data. This paper focuses on joining group behaviors for autonomous elderly. The validation concerns various quantities describing group motion phenomena. The model will be integrated including aspects connected with eventual disabilities in motion for patients.