AUTHOR=Butail Sachit , Porfiri Maurizio 

TITLE=The Effect of An Emergency Evacuation on the Spread of COVID19

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Physics

VOLUME=Volume 8 - 2020

YEAR=2021

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/physics/articles/10.3389/fphy.2020.631264

DOI=10.3389/fphy.2020.631264

ISSN=2296-424X

ABSTRACT=In an emergency evacuation, people almost always come in close proximity as they force themselves to leave a built environment under a potential threat. With COVID19, this situation presents yet another challenge: that of getting unintentionally exposed to an infected individual. To assess the epidemiological consequences of an emergency evacuation, we expanded on a popular pedestrian dynamic model to enable social distancing during a normal exit and analyze transmission through respiratory droplets and aerosol. Computer simulations point to a troubling outcome, whereby the benefits of a quick exit could be outweighed by the risk of infection.