3 research outputs found
Inflow process of pedestrians to a confined space
To better design safe and comfortable urban spaces, understanding the nature
of human crowd movement is important. However, precise interactions among
pedestrians are difficult to measure in the presence of their complex
decision-making processes and many related factors. While extensive studies on
pedestrian flow through bottlenecks and corridors have been conducted, the
dominant mode of interaction in these scenarios may not be relevant in
different scenarios. Here, we attempt to decipher the factors that affect human
reactions to other individuals from a different perspective. We conducted
experiments employing the inflow process in which pedestrians successively
enter a confined area (like an elevator) and look for a temporary position. In
this process, pedestrians have a wider range of options regarding their motion
than in the classical scenarios; therefore, other factors might become
relevant. The preference of location is visualized by pedestrian density
profiles obtained from recorded pedestrian trajectories. Non-trivial patterns
of space acquisition, e.g., an apparent preference for positions near corners,
were observed. This indicates the relevance of psychological and anticipative
factors beyond the private sphere, which have not been deeply discussed so far
in the literature on pedestrian dynamics. From the results, four major factors,
which we call flow avoidance, distance cost, angle cost, and boundary
preference, were suggested. We confirmed that a description of decision-making
based on these factors can give a rise to realistic preference patterns, using
a simple mathematical model. Our findings provide new perspectives and a
baseline for considering the optimization of design and safety in crowded
public areas and public transport carriers.Comment: 23 pages, 6 figure
Adaptive pedestrian behaviour for the preservation of group cohesion
A crowd of pedestrians is a complex system in which individuals exhibit conflicting behavioural mechanisms leading to self-organisation phenomena. Computer models for the simulation of crowds represent a consolidated type of application, employed on a day-to-day basis to support designers and decision makers. Most state of the art models, however, generally do not consider the explicit representation of pedestrians aggregations (groups) and their implications on the overall system dynamics. This work is aimed at discussing a research effort systematically exploring the potential implication of the presence of groups of pedestrians in different situations (e.g. changing density, spatial configurations of the environment). The paper describes an agent-based model encompassing both traditional individual motivations (i.e. tendency to stay away from other pedestrians while moving towards the goal) and an adaptive mechanism representing the influence of group presence in the simulated population. The mechanism is designed to preserve the cohesion of specific types of groups (e.g. families and friends) even in high density and turbulent situations. The model is tested in simplified scenarios to evaluate the implications of modelling choices and the presence of groups. The model produces results in tune with available evidences from the literature, both from the perspective of pedestrian flows and space utilisation, in scenarios not comprising groups; when groups are present, the model is able to preserve their cohesion even in challenging situations (i.e. high density, presence of a counterflow), and it produces interesting results in high density situations that call for further observations and experiments to gather empirical data. The introduced adaptive model for group cohesion is effective in qualitatively reproducing group related phenomena and it stimulates further research efforts aimed at gathering empirical evidences, on one hand, and modelling efforts aimed at reproducing additional related phenomena (e.g. leader-follower movement patterns)