ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Built Environ.
Sec. Structural Engineering and Design
PeopleFlow: A Reproducible Geometry-Aware Multi-Agent Framework for Evacuation Safety Evaluation in Smart Building Environments
Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore, India
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Abstract
Evaluating evacuation performance across building types requires methods that capture how spatial layout, pedestrian behavior, and operational disruptions interact under stress. Static compliance checks do not address this need, and most existing simulation tools require manual geometry preparation with limited support for reproducible cross-layout comparison. This paper introduces PeopleFlow, a geometry-aware multi-agent framework that automatically converts architectural floor plans into simulation environments and applies force-driven pedestrian dynamics with congestion-aware routing. A structured evaluation across 450 core simulations spanning nine layout types and five operational conditions reveals a 7.94-fold range in clearance time, driven primarily by geometric topology and routing policy rather than behavioral parameters alone. A further 210 supplementary runs confirm generalization to real-world floor plans; consistency checks against published evacuation drill ranges show full band overlap with a mean midpoint deviation of 0.83 s. The primary contribution is a reproducible comparative pipeline that couples automated floor-plan ingestion, scenario-controlled simulation, and artifact-backed reporting, giving architects, safety engineers, and digital-twin practitioners a systematic basis for identifying and prioritizing safer design alternatives.
Summary
Keywords
Building evacuation, Digital Twin, evacuation analytics, Multi-agent framework, Pedestrian dynamics, reproducible framework
Received
08 April 2026
Accepted
17 July 2026
Copyright
© 2026 Kunchi, Thulasirangan Lakshmidevi and Karthik. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: K S K Karthik
Disclaimer
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