Survey of detection techniques, mathematical models and simulation software in pedestrian dynamics

The study of pedestrian dynamics has become in the latest years an increasing field of research. A relevant number of technicians have been looking for improving technologies able to detect walking people in various conditions. Several researchers have dedicated their works to model walking dynamics and general laws. Many studiers have developed interesting software to simulate pedestrian behavior in all sorts of situations and environments. Nevertheless, till nowadays, no research has been carried out to analyze all the three over-mentioned aspects. The remarked lack in literature of a complete research, pointing out the fundamental features of pedestrian detection techniques, pedestrian modelling and simulation and their tight relationships, motivates the draft of this paper. Aim of the paper is, first, to provide a schematic summary of each topic. Secondly, a more detailed description of the subjects is displayed, pointing out the advantages and disadvantages of each detection technology, the working logic of each model, outlining the inputs and the provided outputs, and the main features of the simulation software. Finally, the obtained results are summarized and discussed, in order to outline the correlation among the three explained themes

Throughput reduction on the air-ground transport system by the simultaneous effect of multiple traveling routes equipped with parking sites

This paper proposes a stochastic lattice model of the air-ground transport system that comprises a junction of two traveling routes: the domestic route and the international route, each of which has parking sites. The system distributes the arrived aircrafts to either of the two routes and selects one of the parking sites in the route for each aircraft, which stops at the parking site once during its travel. The polyhedral geometric algorithm is introduced to represent inter-vehicular distance and detect other approaching aircrafts. The system displays interesting behavior; remarkably, the dependence of the throughput on the distribution ratio of aircrafts to the domestic route reduces after reaching the maximum parking capacity of the domestic route. Our simulations and analysis with the queueing model describe this phenomenon and suggest the following fact: As the distribution ratio of aircrafts to the international route decreases, the throughput of the international route reduces, and simultaneously, that of the domestic route saturates. This simultaneous effect of the decrease and saturation causes a reduction in the throughput of the entire system

Exitus: An Agent-Based Evacuation Simulation Model For Heterogeneous Populations

Evacuation planning for private-sector organizations is an important consideration given the continuing occurrence of both natural and human-caused disasters that inordinately affect them. Unfortunately, the traditional management approach that is focused on fire drills presents several practical challenges at the scale required for many organizations but especially those responsible for national critical infrastructure assets such as airports and sports arenas. In this research we developed Exitus, a comprehensive decision support system that may be used to simulate large-scale evacuations of such structures. The system is unique because it considers individuals with disabilities explicitly in terms of physical and psychological attributes. It is also capable of classifying the environment in terms of accessibility characteristics encompassing various conditions that have been shown to have a disproportionate effect upon the behavior of individuals with disabilities during an emergency. The system was applied to three unique test beds: a multi-story office building, an international airport, and a major sports arena. Several simulation experiments revealed specific areas of concern for both building managers and management practice in general. In particular, we were able to show (a) how long evacuations of heterogeneous populations may be expected to last, (b) who the most vulnerable groups of people are, (c) the risk engendered from particular design features for individuals with disabilities, and (d) the potential benefits from adopting alternate evacuation strategies, among others. Considered together, the findings provide a useful foundation for the development of best practices and policies addressing the evacuation concerns surrounding heterogeneous populations in large, complex environments. Ultimately, a capabilities based approach featuring both tactical and strategic planning with an eye toward the unique problems presented by individuals with disabilities is recommended

The discrete dynamics of small-scale spatial events: agent-based models of mobility in carnivals and street parades

Small-scale spatial events are situations in which elements or objects vary in such away that temporal dynamics is intrinsic to their representation and explanation. Someof the clearest examples involve local movement from conventional traffic modelingto disaster evacuation where congestion, crowding, panic, and related safety issue arekey features of such events. We propose that such events can be simulated using newvariants of pedestrian model, which embody ideas about how behavior emerges fromthe accumulated interactions between small-scale objects. We present a model inwhich the event space is first explored by agents using ?swarm intelligence?. Armedwith information about the space, agents then move in an unobstructed fashion to theevent. Congestion and problems over safety are then resolved through introducingcontrols in an iterative fashion and rerunning the model until a ?safe solution? isreached. The model has been developed to simulate the effect of changing the route ofthe Notting Hill Carnival, an annual event held in west central London over 2 days inAugust each year. One of the key issues in using such simulation is how the processof modeling interacts with those who manage and control the event. As such, thischanges the nature of the modeling problem from one where control and optimizationis external to the model to one where this is intrinsic to the simulation