DefinePK

Abstract

Pedestrian behaviour study has become a popular topic in transportation and planning conferences where many papers connected to the topic had been published. In Malaysia, studies on the effect of egress facilities, especially at the underground train stations towards the pedestrian movement during emergency evacuation have been given little attention. In order to assist the stakeholder in public transportation division, two shortcomings in the safety aspect of evacuation have been identified. Firstly, the pedestrians’ demand on egress facilities is excessive and could cause severe congestion during peak hours. Next, up to this date, Malaysian Government is yet to establish their very own standard or specification and manuals for emergency evacuation. Instead, they use internationally recognized NFPA 130 standards to construct underground space and facilities for pedestrian. The objective of this study is to identify the factor that influences pedestrians’ behaviour and to explain the framework used for analysing the simulation of risk perception based on it. Site observation and video recording of the passengers’ movement and standing at the platform during peak hour is used as measurement and data collection of this study. Next, questionnaires are used to identify passengers’ route choice in the event of emergency. Viswalk software tool is used to simulate the people’s movement in virtual environment before being validated using Emergency Response Plan (ERP). Significantly, this study will contribute new knowledge in managing passenger crowd during emergency situation towards rail industry in Malaysia (LRT, MRT) as well as academicians.