NetLogo User Community Models

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Download If clicking does not initiate a download, try right clicking or control clicking and choosing "Save" or "Download".(The run link is disabled for this model because it was made in a version prior to NetLogo 6.0, which NetLogo Web requires.)

EVACUATION OF A LECTURE HALL

WHAT IS IT?

This model shows the evacuation of a room. In this case it is a lecture hall.
Depending on the number of persons in the lecture hall and depending on a chance of hanging behind, the time to evacuate the whole lecture hall will decrease or increase.

HOW IT WORKS

To get various results in this model, you can control three basic parts of the model.
The maximal number of students is 147 (plus one professor which is given as a constant in every scenario). But of course you can choose a number of students by your own. While running the model you will notice that the time it takes to evacuate the lecture hall will rise if you increase the number of students and will go down if you decrease the number of students.
Another way to create different evacuation scenarios is to control the chance of every student to “hang behind” in the state of getting up from his seat. Maybe there are some lazy students in the lecture hall. Or you want to create a group of students which is totally motivated and which reacts immediately. However, you have to use the “chance-of-hanging-behind slider” to create your personal students. As you will notice, the higher the “hanging-behind” chance is, the faster the evacuation of most of the students will process (of course some students will hang behind, but this is their own fault).
The third way of manipulating the model is the "breaks?" switch. In this case there is also a probability of hanging behind. But in this case it could happen during the "walking process".

HOW TO USE IT

1. Use the NUMBER-OF-STUDENTS slider to set the number of students which is placed in
the lecture hall later
2. Use the CHANCE-OF-HANGING-BEHIND slider to give every student a chance to hang behind
3. Use the BREAKS? switch to turn on or off the "extra" change of hanging behind while the students are walking trough the lecture hall
4. Use the SECTION switch to turn on or off a color variable which shows you the current state, the turtle is in (purple=students who got up; blue=students who left their row)
5. Press the SETUP button to place your students random all over the lecture hall, including the professor
6. Press the GO button to run the model
7. Look at the monitors and the plot to get more information about the number of students which are already evacuated,the number of students which is still in the lecture hall, the number of students who got up and the number of students who left their row

THINGS TO NOTICE

Don’t forget, that you cannot control the placing of the professor. The model places this turtle always in the front at his desk. Thats the reason why the monitor who is counting the trutles is called "students + prof"

THINGS TO TRY

Maybe you can add some other parameters to get more different results. Feel free to experiment.

EXTENDING THE MODEL

Ideas to add or change in the procedures tab to make the model more complicated, detailed etc.:
- on allocation consider realistic distribution (no random allocation)
- count wait time of turtles / count amount of persons who have to wait because they are blocked by other ones
- form groups who leave the lecture hall together

RELATED MODELS

Names of models in the NetLogo Models Library which are of related interest:
In Netlogo's Social Science Library:
- Trafic Basic
- Trafic Grid
- Aids

CREDITS AND REFERENCES

Programming by Alex and Tobi.
2010.