Agent-Based Model of Mass Campus Shooting: Comparing Hiding and Moving of Civilians

The follow-up impact of the campus shooting incident is enormous. Due to a large number of minors (vulnerable groups) and complex building environments, the school is one of the main targets of terrorists. The Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012 poses a challenge to social and public security. Considering the dichotomous characteristics of the people shot and the impact of the refuge area on the crowd movement in the shooting incident, we use an agent-based model to restore the real target case. Based on the optimal solution, we explore the effects of the number and location of building exits, the scale of the shooter’s attack, and the time to find shelter on the shooting results. For building exits, we found that for the environment in the case, the exit location has little impact on the number of casualties, but the increase in the number of exits provides more evacuation routes for the crowd and reduces the number of casualties. Panic will increase the probability of collision and injury. Hiding in a refuge area away from the shooter is effective to avoid shooting injury. At the same time, we propose the critical point of hiding probability. When it is greater than 40%, the faster the escape speed is, the higher the safety is; escape is more likely to replace avoidance in hiding probability less than 40% of environments. These findings are helpful to guide the building evacuation channel construction and emergency evacuation training.