Modeling Cross-Cultural Differences and Behavioral Adaptability in Crowd Evacuation

Problem Description
In the context of globalization, crowd evacuations in large public spaces (such as international airports, multinational corporate office buildings) must consider the behavioral differences of individuals from diverse cultural backgrounds. For example, individuals from collectivist cultures may be more inclined to evacuate in groups, while those from individualistic cultures may prioritize independent decision-making; individuals from high power distance cultures rely more on authoritative instructions, whereas those from low power distance cultures may actively explore paths. This problem requires establishing a model capable of quantifying the impact of cultural differences on evacuation behavior and designing methods to adapt evacuation strategies to multicultural groups.

Solution Process

1. Identify Key Cultural Dimensions and Their Behavioral Mappings

   • Adopt Hofstede's cultural dimensions theory (such as Individualism/Collectivism, Power Distance, Uncertainty Avoidance) as a framework.
   • Behavioral Mapping Examples:
     • Collectivist Culture: Tendency to gather and wait for companions during evacuation, potentially reducing exit efficiency;
     • High Uncertainty Avoidance Culture: Strictly follow established routes, avoid unfamiliar paths;
     • Low Power Distance Culture: More likely to question authorities' decisions and choose paths autonomously.
   • During modeling, cultural dimensions must be quantified as parameters (e.g., collectivism tendency value \(C_i \in [0,1]\)) and linked to agent behavior rules.

2. Construct a Multicultural Agent Decision-Making Model

   • Extend the basic decision-making framework of the social force model or rational choice model:
     • Movement Target Selection: Incorporate cultural weights into the individual objective function, e.g., for collectivist individuals, add a "distance to companions" term to the path utility:

\[ U_i = \alpha \cdot \frac{1}{t_{\text{path}}} + \beta \cdot \frac{1}{d_{\text{group}}} \quad (\beta \text{ increases with } C_i) \]

 - **Information Response Mechanism**: Individuals with high power distance have a higher probability of obeying commands ($ P_{\text{obey}} \propto \text{Power Distance Value} $), while those with low power distance rely on their own environmental perception.  

• Introduce cultural labels to define the initial distribution of different cultural groups in simulations (e.g., based on real-world demographic proportions).

3. Design Culturally Adaptive Evacuation Strategies

   • Dynamic Guidance System:
     • Detect group cultural characteristics (e.g., through surveillance analyzing aggregation levels) and adjust broadcast content:
       • For highly collectivist groups: Emphasize "act together with companions";
       • For highly individualistic groups: Highlight "personalized suggestions for the fastest route".
   • Exit Allocation Optimization:
     • Consider cultural differences in exit preferences (e.g., certain cultural groups avoid exits associated with specific numbers) and dynamically adjust guidance signs to prevent congestion caused by cultural conflicts.

4. Validation and Sensitivity Analysis

   • Conduct multicultural scenario simulations (e.g., Tokyo Olympic venues and Dubai Airport cases) to compare the evacuation efficiency (e.g., average evacuation time, bottleneck density) of uniform strategies versus adaptive strategies.
   • Analyze the sensitivity of cultural parameters: Adjust the weights of cultural dimensions, observe the impact of behavioral fluctuations on overall evacuation, and identify key cultural factors (e.g., the threshold of collectivism strength on clustering effects).

Summary
Modeling cross-cultural differences requires translating theoretical frameworks into computable parameters, reflecting cultural traits through agent decision rules, and combining them with dynamic strategies to achieve adaptive optimization. The focus lies in the rationality of quantifying the association between cultural factors and behavior, as well as the flexible response mechanisms of the strategies.