I participated in PED2023, held at the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands. PED (Pedestrian and Evacuation Dynamics) is an extremely beneficial international conference that provides insights into future pedestrian flow and evacuation safety from buildings to urban levels. The themes presented covered a wide range, including pedestrian and evacuation dynamics, modeling, basic physics, and crowd management.
This year, there were 55 oral presentations and 66 poster sessions, making a total of 121 presentations, with about 150 engineers participating. Particularly notable were studies using artificial intelligence and machine learning, and the progress in evacuation simulations considering the impact of COVID-19.
At this conference, I summarized my research on tsunami evacuation safety at childcare facilities. The study focused on a scenario where large strollers carrying nursery children were transported up steep slopes to higher ground, proposing the need to develop an evacuation safety verification model that considers the response capabilities and physical burden on childcare staff.
During the presentations, researchers from Europe, Asia, and other regions posed questions about the damage associated with the Nankai Trough earthquake, and there was an exchange of opinions about each other's research. The second day of the conference featured a city tour and a social dinner in 's-Hertogenbosch, providing a wonderful opportunity for networking and fostering exchanges among researchers from the Netherlands, Germany, Ireland, the USA, and various Asian countries.
