Virtual-Real Syncretic Crowd Simulation Method Guided by Building Safety Evacuation Sign

Safety evacuation signs (SESs), as a form of environmental information and perceptual access, play an important role in promoting wayfinding and route selection by providing guidance, warning, and mandatory message to people. This study proposes an innovative crowd simulation method guided by SESs for use in emergencies. The method utilizes the syncretic virtual-real strategy by incorporating the indication function of SESs in the real world into a corresponding virtual environment. Given a virtual scene built on its real reference, our method can determine feasible and efficient routes, and produce diversified and conflict-avoiding crowd movement. Our overall solution can be applied to a variety of virtual environmental applications, whether large outdoor scenes or indoor buildings. We use extensive simulations to highlight the potential of our method in different scenarios and evaluate the results in terms of evacuation efficiency and the reasonableness of SES placement. In practice, our system runs at interactive rates and can solve complex planning problems involving one or more groups.