Dynamic propagation model of crowd panic based on Shanoon's entropy theory under COVID-19 epidemic situation

ABSTRACT

Pedestrian merging flow in the crowd gathering public places are the common movement nodes of crowd kinematics merging and psychological panic transmission. There are stochastic turbulences, disturbances and density fluctuations in the crowd merging area, with high risk of pedestrian stampede events. Based on the dynamics model of crowd merging, this study considers the psychological characteristics of the escape panic in the normal disaster conditions of the crowd in the cross-passages and the epidemic panic psychological characteristics under the public health events. With the introduction of Shanoon's information entropy theory, panic entropy is applied to measure the degrees of transient panic in the fluid grid area of the crowd, the overall transient disorder of the crowd, and the dynamic relationship with time and space changes. This study comprehensively considers the characteristics of conventional escape panic and epidemic panic, defines protective relaxation factors, forms a dynamic model of escape panic propagation, and provides a scientific theoretical basis for crowd evacuation guidance under COVID-19 epidemic situation. © 2021 IEEE.