ABSTRACT
ABSTRACT: The present paper studies crowd behaviors during emergency evacuation by experimental approach. The aim of the experiment is to analyze the path selection during emergency evacuation. Results of experiment indicated that a wider path can increase the efficiency of evacuation. Furthermore, persons in emergency situations will tend to select the wider path even though the path is longer. When the evacuation path is shorter, increasing width will obviously enhance the evacuation efficiency. The results of the present paper will be helpful for building designers to consider the safety factor, further, the results can also be used to calibrates the numerical models.
