Open research questions in Evacuation and Crowd Dynamics

What the literature leaves open

• Lack of unified framework for pedestrian mobility research across disciplines. Fragmented research on pedestrian mobility. Need for clearer understanding of key themes shaping pedestrian mobility.

  Pedestrians as an Innovation Key for Urban Research: A Bibliometric Network Analysis and Literature Review · 2026 · DOI

• The classical social force model lacks characterization of hydrodynamic resistance. The classical social force model lacks consideration of heterogeneous pedestrian mobility. The classical social force model lacks organized guidance mechanisms.

  Escaping the Rising Flow: A Social Force Model for Underground Flood Evacuation Incorporating Drag, Heterogeneity, and Leader-Following · 2026 · DOI

• The lack of evaluation frameworks considering both fire risk and transportation network conditions for high-risk industrial facilities. The need for optimizing fire service accessibility in high-risk industrial areas. The gap in prior work focusing on urban public facilities rather than high-risk industrial facilities.

  Dynamic Evaluation of Fire Service Accessibility for Fireworks Manufacturers · 2026 · DOI

• Prior models for 3D motions have significant limitations. There is a need for a simulation-based method to investigate the influence of 3D motions on evacuation processes. The study aims to address the gap in evacuation behavioural instructions for diverse scenarios.

  Evacuation Behavioural Instructions with 3D Motions: Insights from Three Use Cases · 2025 · DOI

• In mountainous cities, compact street spaces and terrain constraints may further amplify evacuation risks, while quantitative guidance for evacuation-oriented street-facility layout remains insufficient.

  Effects of Street-Facility Layout on Simulated Evacuation Under Simplified Fire Scenarios in a Commercial Pedestrian-Street Corridor in Chongqing: An Agent-Based Scenario Comparison · 2026 · DOI

• The evacuation of the Jasper area was estimated to take eight hours, limited by the single-lane egress route, indicating that a combination of transportation strategies is required for timing reductions in similar jurisdictions.

  A Multi-Source Reconstruction of the 2024 Jasper Wildfire Complex Evacuation and Reentry Periods · 2026 · DOI

• Safety management systems are insufficient, the basic training of road users does not emphasize self-rescue concerns, and the tunnel fire response procedures of the fire and rescue departments contradict self-rescue.

  Effects of structured risk communication on road users’ evacuation behaviour in the event of a tunnel fire – Results from a virtual reality simulation experiment · 2026 · DOI

• Flood evacuation outcomes are critically shaped by human behaviour, yet empirical data on individual decision-making remain scarce due to the dangers and logistical challenges of collecting data during real disasters.

  Human decision-making in crowds in a virtual flood scenario · 2026 · DOI

• Traditional rule-based physical models are limited by their reliance on fixed physical formulas and parameters, which hinders their ability to effectively handle the complex tasks associated with crowd simulation.

  A Data-Driven Crowd Simulation Framework Integrating Physics-Informed Machine Learning With Navigation Potential Fields · 2025 · DOI

• How to fully explore the double-edged sword effect of negative emotion and regulate negative emotion to improve the efficiency of crowd evacuation is still an open issue.

  NegEmotion: Explore the Double-Edged Sword Effect of Negative Emotion on Crowd Evacuation · 2024 · DOI

• While our investigation only addressed the ideas of presence in an environment, future research should investigate the relative contribution of interactivity and consequences within the environment to further identify how behaviors during simulated fire scenarios are affected by each of these factors.

  Impact of Virtual Reality on Decision-Making and Risk Assessment During Simulated Residential Fire Scenarios · 2024 · DOI

• However, the current situation of personal fire safety literacy as it pertains to these tunnels remains unclear.

  Enhancing Fire Safety Knowledge among Underwater Road Tunnel Users: A Survey in China · 2024 · DOI

• The findings reveal that there is a noticeable divergence in public opinion regarding emergency decision making in tunnel fires, related to the complexity of tunnel fire incidents, ethical dilemmas in tunnel fire escape scenarios, and insufficient knowledge popularization of fire safety practices.

  Study on Public Perceptions and Disaster Prevention Framework of Tunnel Fires Based on Social Media and Artificial Intelligence · 2024 · DOI

• As such, there is only limited knowledge about how universal and generalizable experimental observations on crowd behavior are.

  Walk the Line: The role of gender and culture on the movement patterns of pedestrians based on a multicultural study · 2024 · DOI

• The study has yet to fully capture navigable spaces above or below indoor objects and their integration with other navigable spaces in 3D space.

  Evacuation Behavioural Instructions with 3D Motions: Insights from Three Use Cases · 2025 · DOI

• Combining BIM technology with pedestrian simulation, this research uses quantitative data analysis to optimize subway station flow lines under non-emergency conditions, a scenario rarely addressed in existing studies that focus on emergency evacuations, and proposes optimization strategies.

  Applying BIM and pedestrian simulation for architectural flow line optimization in subway stations: an empirical analysis at Chongqing Ranjiaba Station · 2025 · DOI

• The study does not require full exhaustive coverage of all studies, - the study does not conduct a full Systematic Literature Review (SLR), - the study is limited to the analysis of 54 primary…

  Crowd Simulation: A Multi-Dimensional Systematic Mapping Study and Taxonomy · 2026 · DOI

• Future research should focus on integrating learning-based methods, - future research should address inconsistencies in behavioral modeling, - future research should aim to improve realism, behavioral fidelity, and computational…

  Crowd Simulation: A Multi-Dimensional Systematic Mapping Study and Taxonomy · 2026 · DOI

• Further study on the impact of socioeconomic status on EMS performance, - Investigation of the effects of different income and poverty variables on EMS response…

  Where Matters: Geographic Influences on Emergency Response—A Case Study of Dallas, Texas · 2026 · DOI

• The model only addresses the upstream initialization of a crowd simulation, - The model does not consider complete trajectory prediction or microscopic interaction simulation, - The control factor is limited to a local temporal profile of normalized frame-level spawn density, - The model is evaluated through both next-event accuracy and fixed-horizon…

  Controllable Spatio-Temporal Modeling of Pedestrian Spawn Dynamics for Urban Crowd Geosimulation · 2026 · DOI

• Investigating the application of the proposed framework to other domains, - Exploring the use of different control factors, - Developing more advanced models that can capture complex dependencies between spatial locations and temporal occurrences of spawn…

  Controllable Spatio-Temporal Modeling of Pedestrian Spawn Dynamics for Urban Crowd Geosimulation · 2026 · DOI

• Optimizing the spatial configuration of micro fire stations, - Promoting the collaborative planning of shared enterprise-based fire units, - Cross-integrating accessibility metrics into regional industrial land-use…

  Dynamic Evaluation of Fire Service Accessibility for Fireworks Manufacturers · 2026 · DOI

• Further analysis of the five key thematic areas, - Exploration of the relationships between keywords and terms in the main research…

  Pedestrians as an Innovation Key for Urban Research: A Bibliometric Network Analysis and Literature Review · 2026 · DOI

• Further research is needed to validate the model with real-world data, - The study suggests exploring dynamic leader roles and adaptive leader-follower systems, - The model could be extended to incorporate more complex scenarios, - The study could be expanded to include more heterogeneous…

  Escaping the Rising Flow: A Social Force Model for Underground Flood Evacuation Incorporating Drag, Heterogeneity, and Leader-Following · 2026 · DOI

• Despite the contradictory results, 71 % of the 34 participants found the VR technology very helpful in visualising green outlines for doors during the escape.

  Efficacy of Smart City Data Layers in virtual reality for emergency evacuation behaviours · 2025 · DOI

Most-cited papers in Evacuation and Crowd Dynamics

• Simulating dynamical features of escape panic · Nature · 2000 · 4,108 citations
• A conceptual model of emergency department crowding · Annals of Emergency Medicine · 2003 · 785 citations
• Self-Organizing Pedestrian Movement · Environment and Planning B Planning and Design · 2001 · 566 citations
• Immersive virtual reality serious games for evacuation training and research: A systematic literature review · Computers & Education · 2018 · 378 citations
• Evacuation from Natural Disasters: A Systematic Review of the Literature · Risk Analysis · 2016 · 287 citations
• Efficacy of virtual reality in pedestrian safety research · Applied Ergonomics · 2017 · 257 citations
• A Social-Psychological Model of Human Crowding Phenomena · Journal of the American Institute of Planners · 1972 · 218 citations
• Development of BIM, IoT and AR/VR technologies for fire safety and upskilling · Automation in Construction · 2021 · 215 citations
• Microsimulation of Neighborhood Evacuations in the Urban–Wildland Interface · Environment and Planning A Economy and Space · 2002 · 189 citations
• Affiliative behaviour during escape to building exits · Journal of Environmental Psychology · 1983 · 184 citations

Most recent work

• A novel causal inference method of exit choice behaviour analysis for passenger ships during emergency evacuation · Reliability Engineering & System Safety · 2026
• Quantification of influencing factors in the pedestrian evacuation process under ship motion conditions based on evacuation efficiency analysis · Reliability Engineering & System Safety · 2026
• Evaluating underground space of rail transit hub evacuation under fire scenarios: Virtual reality meets agent-based simulation · Accident Analysis & Prevention · 2026
• Exploring Crowd Behavior during Emergency Evacuations in Subway Incidents · Reliability Engineering & System Safety · 2026
• Enhancing fire evacuation safety in metro stations: multi-agent reinforcement learning-guided dynamic signage coordination · Computers & Industrial Engineering · 2026
• Enhancing urban flood resilience through agent-based modeling of evacuation behaviors · Sustainable Cities and Society · 2026
• Algorithmic Evaluation of Fire Evacuation Efficiency Under Dynamic Crowd and Smoke Conditions · Fire · 2026
• Investigating exit choices in fire evacuation using multi-user virtual reality experiments · Safety Science · 2026
• Human-vehicle collaborative evacuation strategies in coal mine fire emergencies: A social force model approach · Reliability Engineering & System Safety · 2026
• A modular agent-based framework for wildfire evacuation: Integrating fire spread, multimodal transport, and dynamic routing · Safety Science · 2026

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