The Use of Human Behaviour to Inform Egress Modeling in Stadiums

With growing concerns of public safety in infrastructure where large crowds gather, designing for egress under normal and emergency conditions is pertinent to ensuring efficient and safe conditions in stadia. There is a need for a large database of publicly available pedestrian movement profiles through experiments and the evaluation of relevant case studies. This thesis outlines novel human behaviour data collection at two stadia. Subsequent egress model validation using the MassMotion Advanced Crowd Simulation Software (MassMotion) was performed and measured total egress times. Although demographics and anthropometry in the stands slightly influenced the egress times, the stadium architecture was the governing factor which impeded pedestrian flow under non-emergency conditions. Analysis of a stadium fire case study allowed for evaluation of this conclusion during an evacuation which revealed that behavioural aspects of both occupant and staff may begin to dominate the egress simulation in an emergency context.