Sesak® : A Crowd Simulation Software with an Optimization Engine for a Safer Building Design

This paper presents a crowd simulation software that can assist building designers in visualizing and evaluating the building designs. It helps to simulate the movement of crowd in a building, visualize it and hence speed up decision-making process during building layout design stage. The software consists of 4 modules: the environment editor, the pathfinding module, the simulation module and the optimization module. The optimization engine assists the designers in improving their designs so as to ensure good trade-offs between various design parameters. In the example shown in this paper, the optimization feature is able to improve the evacuation process by 17.1% compared to the original design. It is envisaged that the crowd simulation software approach is critical in ensuring the safety of building occupants especially during emergency evacuation