The Impact of Exit-Area Guidance Announcements on Evacuation Efficiency: A Multi-Agent Simulation Approach

In disaster evacuations in Japan, guide lights and emergency broadcast systems are commonly employed to direct evacuees. Guide lights visually indicate evacuation routes; however, their effectiveness can be compromised in situations involving heavy smoke, confusion, or panic. Emergency broadcast systems, on the other hand, transmit audio alerts and can notify individuals of danger even in low-visibility conditions, although they typically do not provide clear directional guidance toward exits. Based on these considerations, this study hypothesized that broadcasting exit-area guidance announcements could improve evacuation efficiency. A multi-agent simulation (MAS) was employed to test this hypothesis, modeling crowd behavior in evacuation scenarios. First, a virtual space with complex pathways was constructed, with agents representing human evacuees introduced into the environment. Next, the simulation was conducted multiple times for each case, varying the number and placement of loudspeakers used to broadcast guidance announcements, and the average evacuation completion time for each case was calculated accordingly. The results consistently demonstrated that scenarios incorporating exit-area guidance announcements achieved shorter average evacuation times compared to those without such guidance. These findings suggest that localized, exit-area audio announcements may enhance the evacuation efficiency during disasters.