Abstract: Aiming at the present distinctive internal structure of new-style cinema, a new cellular automaton model is proposed to simulate pedestrian evacuation by introducing “position safety degree”, which identifies the strategy of routing choice. The influences of different internal layouts and different exit positions on evacuation efficiency are investigated via numerical simulation. Furthermore, the typical evacuation scenes are also discussed in detail. The simulation results show that setting up more aisles, especially towards exits will improve the evacuation efficiency greatly. For a cinema with two exits, the optimal evacuation efficiency can be obtained, when these two exits are designed along the left and the right sides of the cinema, respectively, and displayed as a front and back diagonal distribution. In addition, the escape is much easier for the pedestrians close to aisles than those in the central position.

Key words: pedestrian flow, emergency evacuation, cellular automaton, evacuation efficiency