Faster is Slower effect for evacuation processes: A granular standpoint

The so-called Faster is Slower (FIS) effect is observed in some particular real-life or experimental situations. In the context of an evacuation process, it expresses that increasing the speed (or, more generally, the competitiveness) of individuals may induce a reduction of the flow through the exit door. We propose here a parameter-free model to reproduce and investigate this effect (more precisely its backward “Slower is Faster” equivalent). In spite of its non-smooth character, which makes it difficult to analyze, this granular approach is based on very basic ingredients in terms of behavior. In its native, purely asocial version, individuals are represented by hard-discs, each of which has a desired velocity, and the actual velocity is built as the projection of this field on the set of admissible velocities (which respect the non-overlapping constraints). We implement the slower effect by introducing here an extra step to account for the fact that individuals refrain from pushing, and therefore tend to reduce their desired velocity accounting for the velocities of people upfront. The present paper has two objectives: establish the relevance of this model by showing that it satisfactorily reproduces various empirical effects in highly crowded evacuations with various levels of competitiveness, and explore how it can be implemented to recover and explain the FIS effect. In this spirit, we confront this Inhibition-Based (IB) model to experimental data, focusing on the Faster is Slower effect. We show in particular that this approach makes it possible to accurately recover the effect of competitiveness upon power-law distributions of time lapses which have been experimentally observed. We also study the effect of mixed behaviors, by introducing a two-population model using both approaches. We investigate in particular the effect upon evacuation efficiency of the ratio between competitive agents and non-competitive ones. In a similar context, we investigate the role of an obstacle placed upstream the exit upon evacuation efficiency. •Numerical investigation of the Faster is Slower effect based on a parameter free model.•Integration of an inhibition tendency of polite pedestrians.•Numerical evidence of the fluidizing role of an obstacle upstream the exit during evacuation.•Numerical recovering of an experimental power law for time lapses.