Agitated behavior and elastic characteristics of pedestrians in an alternative floor field model for pedestrian dynamics

An alternative floor field (FF) model is proposed by incorporating the agitated behavior and elastic characteristics of pedestrians. The agitated behavior which is regarded as an important factor to pedestrian dynamics is depicted by introducing a parameter to revise the transition probability of pedestrians to move to the neighboring cells. To characterize elasticity of pedestrians, it is assumed that a cell can hold more than one pedestrians in crowd condition, while it can hold only one pedestrian in normal condition. In addition, a method to deal with conflicts is employed by considering the effects of agitated behavior and desired velocity. Numerical simulations are carried out to investigate pedestrian evacuation from a room. The results show, that as the value of agitated parameter increases, the evacuation time decreases to the minimum value and then increases gradually. Also, the faster-is-slower effect which is obtained by some other simulation models can be reproduced by the proposed model. Finally, the influence of exit width and the corresponding mechanism on evacuation process is investigated which is expected to be helpful to the exit design of public rooms.     

Pedestrian evacuation at the subway station under fire

With the development of urban rail transit, ensuring the safe evacuation of pedestrians at subway stations has become an important issue in the case of an emergency such as a fire. This paper chooses the platform of line 4 at the Beijing Xuanwumen subway station to study the emergency evacuation process under fire. Based on the established platform, effects of the fire dynamics, different initial pedestrian densities, and positions of fire on evacuation are investigated. According to simulation results, it is found that the fire increases the air temperature and the smoke density, and decreases pedestrians' visibility and walking velocity. Also, there is a critical initial density at the platform if achieving a safe evacuation within the required 6 minutes. Furthermore, different positions of fire set in this paper have little difference on crowd evacuation if the fire is not large enough. The suggestions provided in this paper are helpful for the subway operators to prevent major casualties.     

Modelling crowd–bridge dynamic interaction with a discretely defined crowd

This paper presents a novel method of modelling crowd–bridge interaction using discrete element theory (DET) to model the pedestrian crowd. DET, also known as agent-based modelling, is commonly used in the simulation of pedestrian movement, particularly in cases where building evacuation is critical or potentially problematic. Pedestrians are modelled as individual elements subject to global behavioural rules. In this paper a discrete element crowd model is coupled with a dynamic bridge model in a time-stepping framework. Feedback takes place between both models at each time-step. An additional pedestrian stimulus is introduced that is a function of bridge lateral dynamic behaviour. The pedestrians' relationship with the vibrating bridge as well as the pedestrians around them is thus simulated. The lateral dynamic behaviour of the bridge is modelled as a damped single degree of freedom (SDoF) oscillator. The excitation and mass enhancement of the dynamic system is determined as the sum of individual pedestrian contributions at each time-step. Previous crowd–structure interaction modelling has utilised a continuous hydrodynamic crowd model. Limitations inherent in this modelling approach are identified and results presented that demonstrate the ability of DET to address these limitations. Simulation results demonstrate the model's ability to consider low density traffic flows and inter-subject variability. The emergence of the crowd's velocity–density relationship is also discussed.     

Visualization of crowd synchronization on footbridges

Abstract  

This paper proposes a framework for the visualization of crowd walking synchronization on footbridges. The bridge is modeled as a mass-spring system, which is a weakly damped and driven harmonic oscillator. Both the bridge and the pedestrians walking on the bridge are affected by the movement of each other. The crowd acts according to local behavioral rules. Each pedestrian is provided with a kinematic walking system. We extend a current mathematical model of crowd synchronization on footbridges to include human walking model and crowd simulation techniques. We run experiments to evaluate the influence of these extensions on synchronization.     

基于元胞传输模型的楼梯区域行人运动

针对楼梯区域行人运动进行观测实验,获得行人上下楼过程中的运动数据,通过对数据进行整理与分析,绘制不同过程中流量-密度变化关系图.通过对流密关系图进行定量分析,掌握楼梯区域行人运动特征,并改进原有元胞传输模型,提出楼梯行人运动模型,仿真模拟行人运动过程.模型中,引入势能修正系数,利用异向行人对元胞势能的影响来改变行人的路径选择;引入流量修正系数,描述不同的物理参数对元胞边界最大流量的影响;引入偏移系数,修正移动规则,增强优先方向对行人路径选择行为的影响.然后,通过比较仿真结果与实验数据,对模型及引入参数进行验证和校准.最后,利用校正模型,模拟研究楼梯区域对向行人运动过程,并对势能修正参数进行了灵敏度分析,进一步研究模型参数对行人运动的影响.研究表明,该模型可以模拟刻画楼梯区域行人运动过程,同时验证了楼梯区域行人集散效率跟行人到达率与行人路径选择有关.     

A continuous distance model (CDM) for the single-file pedestrian movement considering step frequency and length

A good evacuation model should be good to predict actual macroscopic and microscopic characteristics of pedestrian movement. In order to explore pedestrian movement behavior, we conducted controlled experiments of the single-file pedestrian movement, extracted the motion data by using a mean-shift digital image processing algorithm and analyzed the movement characteristics of pedestrians. It is found that both the pedestrian step length and frequency decreases with the increasing global pedestrian density. Furthermore, there is linear relationship between the step frequency and the distance headway of a pedestrian. Based on the characteristics observed from our experiments, we built a continuous distance model (CDM) for the single-file pedestrian movement. Two new insights were taken into account in the movement algorithm. The first one is that, the continuous step length is adopted to avoid unreasonable results caused by the simplification of the step length in traditional discrete models. The second one is that the dependency between the transition probability and the distance headway is introduced for the reason that the transition probability is correlated with the actual step frequency. Simulation results indicated that there is a close agreement on the flow-density and velocity–density relations between the experiments and modeling. Moreover, it is found that the CDM model is capable of reproducing microscopic features for the scenario with high density.     

Simulation of crowd dynamics in pedestrian evacuation concerning panic contagion: A cellular automaton approach

The study of the panic evacuation process is of great significance to emergency management. Panic not only causes negative emotions such as irritability and anxiety, but also affects the pedestrians decision-making process, thereby inducing the abnormal crowd behavior. Prompted by the epidemiological SIR model, an extended floor field cellular automaton model was proposed to investigate the pedestrian dynamics under the threat of hazard resulting from the panic contagion. In the model, the conception of panic transmission status (PTS) was put forward to describe pedestrians' behavior who could transmit panic emotions to others. The model also indicated the pedestrian movement was governed by the static and hazard threat floor field. Then rules that panic could influence decision-making process were set up based on the floor field theory. The simulation results show that the stronger the pedestrian panic, the more sensitive pedestrians are to hazards, and the less able to rationally find safe exits. However, when the crowd density is high, the panic contagion has a less impact on the evacuation process of pedestrians. It is also found that when the hazard position is closer to the exit, the panic will propagate for a longer time and have a greater impact on the evacuation. The results also suggest that as the extent of pedestrian's familiarity with the environment increases, pedestrians spend less time to escape from the room and are less sensitive to the hazard. In addition, it is essential to point out that, compared with the impact of panic contagion, the pedestrian's familiarity with environment has a more significant influence on the evacuation.     

通过博弈的室内行人疏散动力学研究

在室内行人疏散过程中,行人博弈对疏散效率有着重要的影响.本文把抵制博弈策略更新的强度定义为抵制强度. 为了研究抵制强度对疏散效率的影响, 通过在行人博弈策略更新的概率中引入抵制强度,基于元胞自动机模型数值计算在不同的行人密度, 出口宽度下疏散总时间随抵制强度变化的关系.结果表明: 室内行人疏散过程中, 抵制强度小会使得争抢行为极其容易蔓延. 当行人密度小且出口宽大时, 输入以急速疏散为主的规范信息,鼓励行人模仿优胜者更新博弈策略, 当行人密度大且出口狭小时, 输入以避让为主的规范信息抑制行人争抢,都能提高疏散效率. 最后找出不同条件下与最短疏散总时间相对应的优化抵制强度, 为提高室内行人疏散效率提供一个新的视角.     

步行通道内行人流拉链现象的生成机理与仿真研究

以步行通道内的单向行人流为研究对象,分析研究行人拉链现象的生成机理,并建立基于Voronoi图的速度修正模型对其仿真研究.首先,从行人追求视野最佳和步行舒适的角度分析拉链现象的生成机理,以行人的视野关注和视野遮挡描述影响行人移动过程中产生拉链偏移的因素;以行人局部密度描述行人的步行舒适度;引入拉链敏感系数描述行人客观偏移的意愿程度;提出单个行人侧向偏移的机制,获得行人最佳的偏移位置.然后,构建基于Voronoi图的行人速度修正仿真模型,考虑行人是否有偏移倾向的主观意愿,并嵌入偏移规则,模拟再现行人的拉链现象.仿真发现:行人的拉链层数与通道宽度成正比,该模型速度密度关系图与实证数据吻合较好;与不考虑拉链效应相比,倾向主动进行侧向偏移的行人占比越大,越有助于提高通道内行人的移动速度、舒适度和空间利用率.     

Determining an influencing area affecting walking speed on footpath: A case study of a footpath in CBD Bangkok,Thailand

Intuitively, the crowd density in front of a pedestrian will affect his walking speed along a footpath. Nevertheless, the size of the influencing area affecting walking speed has rarely been scrutinized in the past. This study attempts to determine the distance in front of pedestrians that principally affects their walking speed under normal conditions, using a case study of a footpath in Bangkok. We recorded pedestrian activities along a test section of 20 m, with an effective walking width of 2.45 m in the morning and at noon. The morning dataset was extracted for analyzing various influencing distances, ranging from 1 to 20 m in front of the pedestrian. The bi-directional walking speed–pedestrian density models were developed, for each tested distance, using linear regression analysis. It was found that an influencing length in the range of 5–8 m yields the highest correlation coefficients. In the case of high density conditions, the walking speed of the equally-split flow (50:50) was found to be higher than other proportional flow analyzed. The finding has useful implications on the improvement of the walking simulations in mesoscopic models.     

Dynamics of emotional contagion in dense pedestrian crowds

In places with high-density pedestrian movements, irrational emotions can quickly spread out under emergency, which may eventually lead to asphyxiation and crushing. It was noticed that a pedestrian's emotion in crowd would change as a result of the influence from other pedestrians. Thus, to explore the dynamics of emotion contagion process in dense pedestrians, two types of pedestrian emotions, i.e., negative and positive have been identified. Taking into account the emotional transit of a pedestrian, a crowd movement model is established in the present paper. We simulate pedestrian movement in a region with periodic boundary condition to study the dynamics of emotional contagion in dense crowds. Influences of the initial negative pedestrian proportion, pedestrian crowd density, emotion influence radius, and dose factor on the transition of overall crowd emotion state have been investigated. We expect this study could provide theoretical suggestions for crowd management.     

Experimental identification of pedestrian-induced lateral forces on footbridges

This paper presents a comprehensive experimental analysis of lateral forces generated by single pedestrians during continuous walking on a treadmill. Two different conditions are investigated; initially the treadmill is fixed and then it is laterally driven in a sinusoidal motion at varying combinations of frequencies (0.33-1.07 Hz) and amplitudes (4.5-48 mm). The experimental campaign involved 71 male and female human adults and covered approximately 55 km of walking distributed between 4954 individual tests. When walking on a laterally moving surface, motion-induced forces develop at the frequency of the movement and are herewith quantified through equivalent velocity and acceleration proportional coefficients. Their dependency on the vibration frequency and amplitude is presented, both in terms of mean values and probabilistically to illustrate the randomness associated with intra- and inter-subject variability. It is shown that the motion-induced portion of the pedestrian load (on average) inputs energy into the structure in the frequency range (normalised by the mean walking frequency) between approximately 0.6 and 1.2. Furthermore, it is shown that the load component in phase with the acceleration of the treadmill depends on the frequency of the movement, such that pedestrians (on average) subtract from the overall modal mass for low frequency motion and add to the overall modal mass at higher frequencies.     

Modeling walking behavior of pedestrian groups with floor field cellular automaton approach

Walking in groups is very common in a realistic walking environment. An extended floor field cellular automaton(CA)model is therefore proposed to describe the walking behavior of pedestrian groups. This model represents the motion of pedestrian groups in a realistic way. The simulation results reveal that the walking behavior of groups has an important but negative influence on pedestrian flow dynamics, especially when the density is at a high level. The presence of pedestrian groups retards the emergence of lane formation and increases the instability of operation of pedestrian flow. Moreover,the average velocity and volume of pedestrian flow are significantly reduced due to the group motion. Meanwhile, the parameter-sensitive analysis suggests that pedestrian groups should make a compromise between efficient movement and staying coherent with a certain spatial structure when walking in a dense crowd.     

基于教室人群疏散实验的行人流建模和模拟

基于教室人群疏散实验, 从中归纳出疏散过程中行人的基本运动特征. 将桌椅分别视为不可穿越和可穿越的静态障碍物, 而行人则被当成可移动的障碍物, 这将导致背景场随人群的运动而动态更新, 因此可以更好地反映前方拥挤程度对后面人群路径选择行为的影响. 采用基于动态背景场的元胞自动机模型研究了不同桌椅排列和出口宽度的教室人群疏散过程, 给出了疏散时间的空间分布以及平均和最大疏散时间, 再现了实验中人群疏散的基本特征. 数值模拟结果表明, 疏散时间取决于桌椅的排列方式和教室出口的宽度. 对于同一种排列, 出口越小则疏散时间越长; 对于给定的出口宽度, 通常随着过道数的增加, 疏散时间随之减少; 当过道数增加且过道宽度不足以两人并行, 从两侧进入过道的行人会发生冲突, 使疏散效率有所降低; 靠近出口一侧墙壁设置过道有利于人群的疏散. 文中进一步分析了模拟与实验结果存在差异的原因.     

A modified heuristics-based model for simulating realistic pedestrian movement behavior

Pedestrian movement simulation models are used in various areas, such as building evacuation, transportation engineering, and safety management of large events. It also provides effective means to uncover underlying mechanisms of collective behaviors. In this work, a modified heuristics-based model is presented. In this model, the potential collisions in the moving process are explicitly considered. Meanwhile, a series of simulations is conducted in two typical scenarios to demonstrate the influence of critical parameters on model performance. It is found that when facing a wide obstacle in a corridor, the larger the visual radius, the earlier the pedestrian starts to make a detour. In addition, when a pedestrian observes a large crowd walking toward him, he chooses to make a detour and moves in the flow in a uniform direction. Furthermore, the model can reproduce the lane formation pedestrian flow phenomena in relatively high-density situations. With the increase of pedestrian visual radius and the weight of potential collision resistance, more stable pedestrian lanes and fewer moving-through-the-counterflow pedestrians can be observed. In terms of model validation, the density-speed relationship of simulation results accords well with that of the published empirical data. Our results demonstrate that the modified heuristics-based model can overcome the deficiency of the original model, and reproduce more realistic pedestrian movement behavior.     

Simulation study on cooperation behaviors and crowd dynamics in pedestrian evacuation

Pedestrian evacuation is actually a process of behavioral evolution. Interaction behaviors between pedestrians affect not only the evolution of their cooperation strategy, but also their evacuation paths-scheduling and dynamics features. The existence of interaction behaviors and cooperation evolution is therefore critical for pedestrian evacuation. To address this issue, an extended cellular automaton(CA) evacuation model considering the effects of interaction behaviors and cooperation evolution is proposed here. The influence mechanism of the environment factor and interaction behaviors between neighbors on the decision-making of one pedestrian to path scheduling is focused. Average payoffs interacting with neighbors are used to represent the competitive ability of one pedestrian, aiming to solve the conflicts when more than one pedestrian competes for the same position based on a new method. Influences of interaction behaviors, the panic degree and the conflict cost on the evacuation dynamics and cooperation evolution of pedestrians are discussed. Simulation results of the room evacuation show that the interaction behaviors between pedestrians to a certain extent are beneficial to the evacuation efficiency and the formation of cooperation behaviors as well. The increase of conflict cost prolongs the evacuation time. Panic emotions of pedestrians are bad for cooperation behaviors of the crowd and have complex effects on evacuation time. A new self-organization effect is also presented.     

Biomechanically inspired modelling of pedestrian-induced forces on laterally oscillating structures

Despite considerable interest among engineers and scientists, bi-directional interaction between walking pedestrians and lively bridges has still not been well understood. In an attempt to bridge this gap a biomechanically inspired model of the human response to lateral bridge motion is presented and explored. The simple inverted pendulum model captures the key features of pedestrian lateral balance and the resulting forces on the structure. The forces include self-excited components that can be effectively modelled as frequency-dependent added damping and mass to the structure. The results of numerical simulations are in reasonable agreement with recent experimental measurements of humans walking on a laterally oscillating treadmill, and in very good agreement with measurements on full-scale bridges. In contrast to many other models of lateral pedestrian loading, synchronisation with the bridge motion is not involved. A parametric study of the model is conducted, revealing that as pedestrians slow down as a crowd becomes more dense, their resulting lower pacing rates generate larger self-excited forces. For typical pedestrian parameters, the potential to generate negative damping arises for any lateral bridge vibration frequency above 0.43 Hz, depending on the walking frequency. Stability boundaries of the combined pedestrian–structure system are presented in terms of the structural damping ratio and pedestrian-to-bridge mass ratio, revealing complex relations between damping demand and bridge and pedestrian frequencies, due to the added mass effect. Finally it is demonstrated that the model can produce simultaneous self-excited forces on multiple structural modes, and a realistic full simulation of a large number of pedestrians, walking randomly and interacting with a bridge, produces structural behaviour in very good agreement with site observations.     

Kinetic theory of situated agents applied to pedestrian flow in a corridor

A situated agent-based model for simulation of pedestrian flow in a corridor is presented. In this model, pedestrians choose their paths freely and make decisions based on local criteria for solving collision conflicts. The crowd consists of multiple walking agents equipped with a function of perception as well as a competitive rule-based strategy that enables pedestrians to reach free access areas. Pedestrians in our model are autonomous entities capable of perceiving and making decisions. They apply socially accepted conventions, such as avoidance rules, as well as individual preferences such as the use of specific exit points, or the execution of eventual comfort turns resulting in spontaneous changes of walking speed. Periodic boundary conditions were considered in order to determine the density-average walking speed, and the density-average activity with respect to specific parameters: comfort angle turn and frequency of angle turn of walking agents. The main contribution of this work is an agent-based model where each pedestrian is represented as an autonomous agent. At the same time the pedestrian crowd dynamics is framed by the kinetic theory of biological systems.     

Study on evacuation behaviors at a T-shaped intersection by a force-driving cellular automata model

A force-driving cellular automata model considering the social force on cell movement, such as the desirous willing of a pedestrian to exit, the repulsive interaction among pedestrians or between pedestrians and obstacles, was set up to investigate the evacuation behaviors of pedestrians at a T-shaped intersection. And an analogical formulation, taking reference of the magnetic force, was introduced to describe the above repulsive actions. Based on the model, the evacuation behaviors of pedestrians were simulated in terms of different pedestrian density, distribution and corridor width, and then evacuation time was obtained and analyzed. Furthermore, an experiment was conducted to verify the results of the presented model. The results demonstrate that when the density of pedestrians is greater than a certain threshold, pedestrians of a certain direction would be jammed by the repulsion from pedestrians of the counter flow from another direction, and the evacuation time of the former would be longer, even though they are closer to the exit, which would possibly result in a serious casualty in an emergency circumstance. And the phenomenon has been validated by the experiments well. In addition, a corresponding critical corridor width related to different DOPs, beyond which the evacuation time could be decreased rapidly due to a strong degradation of jamming behaviors near the T-shaped intersection, was also discovered and predicted by the proposed model.     

A least-effort principle based model for heterogeneous pedestrian flow considering overtaking behavior

In the context of global aging, how to design traffic facilities for a population with a different age composition is of high importance. For this purpose, we propose a model based on the least effort principle to simulate heterogeneous pedestrian flow. In the model, the pedestrian is represented by a three-disc shaped agent. We add a new parameter to realize pedestrians' preference to avoid changing their direction of movement too quickly. The model is validated with numerous experimental data on unidirectional pedestrian flow. In addition, we investigate the influence of corridor width and velocity distribution of crowds on unidirectional heterogeneous pedestrian flow. The simulation results reflect that widening corridors could increase the specific flow for the crowd composed of two kinds of pedestrians with significantly different free velocities. Moreover, compared with a unified crowd, the crowd composed of pedestrians with great mobility differences requires a wider corridor to attain the same traffic efficiency. This study could be beneficial in providing a better understanding of heterogeneous pedestrian flow, and quantified outcomes could be applied in traffic facility design.