An extended cellular automaton model for crowd evacuation under multi-storey building with ControlNet
Abstract
: Vertical evacuation safety in high-rise buildings presents a key challenge for urban resilience. This study proposes an automated evacuation modelling method for high-rise buildings that combines deep learning and an extended cellular automaton model, which can achieve rapid and reasonable evacuation modelling under customized multi-layer building scenarios. A ControlNet is integrated to convert building floor plans into semantic feature maps, and a multi-level cellular automaton framework is constructed that includes floor layouts and bilateral stairwells, allowing to customize the number of floors and visualize dynamic evacuation process between staircases. Comparative analysis with validated models and actual evacuation drill data, the proposed method shows a higher semantic segmentation accuracy (IoU=0.906) and more accurate evacuation time prediction (Error
Fields of Study & Subjects
Evacuation and Crowd Dynamics
Elevator Systems and Control
Underground infrastructure and sustainability
Publication details
- Journal / source
- Journal of Building Engineering
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Volume
- 120
- Pages
- 115441–115441
- Publication date
- 29 January 2026
- Language
- EN