Introduction
Emergency situations are an integral part of the series of events that humans experience throughout their lives. In emergency situations, the priority is to save lives, and the easiest way to ensure human safety is to move away from the scene. In recent years, numerous studies have been conducted in the field of safe emergency evacuation. This study is based on the integrated framework for evaluating and improving emergency crowd evacuation. We aim to investigate the possibility of measuring the impact of behavioral and physical factors on the duration of complete and safe emergency crowd evacuation and also to provide solutions to reduce this duration. In this study, by using the Shrine of Bani Hashem as a case study, we want to answer the following questions: Do behaviors resulting from social dependencies affect the duration of the emergency evacuation of pilgrims? To what extent does pilgrims’ fear affect the duration of a complete emergency evacuation? To what extent does phased evacuation of the pilgrims affect the duration of emergency evacuation? 

Methods
This is a descriptive/analytical study using the agent-oriented approach. The pilgrims to the holy shrine of Imam Hussein on special days, such as Muharram and Arbaeen, when the majority include non-native and foreign pilgrims, constitute the study population. Maps of the Bani Hashem shrine, which is being designed and constructed on a five-hectare land with an area of nearly 200,000 square meters near the shrine of Imam Hussein, were prepared. In order to achieve benchmark results, the evacuation process was simulated in a normal (non-emergency) state with a benchmark population and taking into account the employee population. In this scenario, the entire population was assumed to be homogeneous. After that, the simulation was repeated by applying behavioral and physical variables (social dependence, fear, and phased evacuation), and the results were compared with the benchmark results. Pathfinder software was used for simulation.

Results
The findings from the simulations showed that the duration of complete crowd evacuation in non-emergency conditions was 619 seconds. To evaluate the effect of social dependency, simulations were conducted in four scenarios, with dependency rates of 5, 10, 15, and 20% of the population. The results of the simulations showed an increase in the evacuation time by 623, 635, 651, and 675 seconds, respectively. To evaluate the impact of the fear factor, simulations were conducted in four scenarios, with fear rates of 5, 10, 15, and 20% of the population. The results of the simulations showed that fear increased the evacuation time by 644, 675, 749, and 854 seconds, respectively. To assess the impact of management components, a phased crowd evacuation strategy was simulated. In this strategy, half of the population was evacuated with a delay and the other half without a delay. The simulation was carried out in three scenarios, with delays of 45, 90, and 135 seconds. The simulation results showed an increase in the evacuation time by 621, 632, and 647 seconds, respectively, compared to the benchmark duration.

Conclusion
The duration of the complete crowd evacuation of the Bani Hashem shrine in normal and non-emergency conditions is 619 seconds. Behaviors resulting from social dependencies and fear and the use of a phased evacuation strategy can increase the duration of the evacuation. The social dependency variable increases the complete crowd evacuation time by up to 9% in various scenarios. People with social dependencies search for friends and relatives before leaving, which will delay the start of group evacuation and disturb the evacuation process. The fear variable increases complete crowd evacuation time by up to 38%. Panicked people move faster, causing themselves and others to evacuate more slowly, especially during religious ceremonies. Moreover, adopting a phased evacuation strategy not only would not help reduce the crowd evacuation time, but would also increase the evacuation time by up to 5%.

Ethical Considerations

Compliance with ethical guidelines
All ethical principles were considered.

Funding
This research is extracted from the thesis of Ali Safarifard. This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for profit sectors.

Authors' contributions
Conceptualization, resources, writing, visualization: Ali Safarifard; Data analysis: Ali Safarifard and Leila Karimifard; Investigation: Ali Safarifard and Mohammadreza Mansoori; Editing and review, validation: Leila Karimifard; Supervision and project management: Mohammadreza Mansoori; And Leila Karimifard; Methodology: All authors

Conflicts of interest
This article has no conflicts of interest.

Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Dr. Seyed Rahman Eghbali and Dr. Sahand Sarioletlagh Fard, for their assistance.
 


 

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