Evacuation of Nursing Home Based on Massmotion: Effect of the Distribution of Dependent Elderly

As dramatically increased elderly population, China is entering a society of deep aging. Due to the decline of physical functions, the elderly move slowly and have difficulty in escape. Hence, enough attention should be paid on pedestrian crowds’ evacuation in a nursing home. This paper takes Chinese old-age care institutions as the research object. Using the Massmotion based on the social force to establish the evacuation model and setting the parameters according to the movement characteristics of the elderly, this paper studied the influence of the dependent elderly on evacuation efficiency when they are distributed to the higher floors of the nursing home in different proportions. The results show that the evacuation time is significantly prolonged with the increase of the proportion of dependent elderly, and there is a controllable critical value for the proportion of dependent elderly. A speed-up phenomenon is observed when the old man enters the landing from the stairway, and meanwhile, with the increase of the proportion of dependent elderly, the acceleration position is gradually advanced, while the instantaneous speed declines. The results of this study can provide references in properly arranging the distribution of elderly accommodation and safe evacuation of the aged care institutions.