The Effect of Integrating Travel Time

This contribution demonstrates the potential gain for the quality of results in a simulation of pedestrians when estimated remaining travel time is considered as a determining factor for the movement of simulated pedestrians. This is done twice: once for a force-based model and once for a cellular automata-based model. The results show that for the (degree of realism of) simulation results it is more relevant if estimated remaining travel time is considered or not than which modeling technique is chosen -- here force-based vs. cellular automata -- which normally is considered to be the most basic choice of modeling approach.Comment: preprint of Pedestrian and Evacuation 2012 conference (PED2012) contributio

Optimal Pedestrian Path Planning in Evacuation Scenario

Simulation of evacuation plans is a relatively complex problem. It is necessary to simulate a number of separate processes which interact in the result. Namely, they are pedestrian-pedestrian interactions, pedestrian-static object (e.g. wall) interactions and pedestrian-environment (fire, smoke, etc.) interactions. In this case, the evacuation simulation is controled on the microscopic level. Microscopic level considers each individual separately and pedestrian is planning his/her path to the exit with regard to the above-mentioned interactions. In this article we focus on path planning during evacuation and describe algorithms applied in this area. At the end we propose a method of the space evaluation with linear time complexity and planned path compared with commercial software tools

Two dimensional outflows for cellular automata with shuffle updates

In this paper, we explore the two-dimensional behavior of cellular automata with shuffle updates. As a test case, we consider the evacuation of a square room by pedestrians modeled by a cellular automaton model with a static floor field. Shuffle updates are characterized by a variable associated to each particle and called phase, that can be interpreted as the phase in the step cycle in the frame of pedestrian flows. Here we also introduce a dynamics for these phases, in order to modify the properties of the model. We investigate in particular the crossover between low- and high-density regimes that occurs when the density of pedestrians increases, the dependency of the outflow in the strength of the floor field, and the shape of the queue in front of the exit. Eventually we discuss the relevance of these results for pedestrians.Comment: 20 pages, 5 figures. v2: 16 pages, 5 figures; changed the title, abstract and structure of the paper. v3: minor change

Quantitative validation of PEDFLOW for description of unidirectional pedestrian dynamics

The results of a systematic quantitative validation of PEDFLOW based on the experimental data from FZJ are presented. Unidirectional flow experiments, totaling 28 different combinations with varying entry, corridor and exit widths, were considered. The condition imposed on PEDFLOW was that all the cases should be run with the same input parameters. The exit times and fundamental diagrams for the measuring region were evaluated and compared. This validation process led to modifications and enhancements of the model underlying PEDFLOW. The preliminary conclusions indicate that the results agree well for densities smaller than 3 m-2 and a good agreement is observed even at high densities for the corridors with bcor = 2.4 m, and bcor = 3.0 m. For densities between 1 and 2 m-2 the specific flow and velocities are underpredicted by PEDFLOW.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, 1 Table, conference PED201

Environmental effect on egress simulation

Abstract. Evacuation and egress simulations can be a useful tool for studying the effect of design decisions on the flow of agent movement. This type of simulation can be used to determine before hand the effect of design decisions and enable exploration of potential improvements. In this work, we study at how agent egress is affected by the environment in real world and large scale virtual environments and investigate metrics to analyze the flow. Our work differs from many evacuation systems in that we support grouping restrictions between agents (e.g., families or other social groups traveling together), and model scenarios with multiple modes of transportation with physically realistic dynamics (e.g., individuals walk from a building to their own cars and leave only when all people in the group arrive).