Modelling shared space users via rule-based social force model

The promotion of space sharing in order to raise the quality of community living and safety of street surroundings is increasingly accepted feature of modern urban design. In this context, the development of a shared space simulation tool is essential in helping determine whether particular shared space schemes are suitable alternatives to traditional street layouts. A simulation tool that enables urban designers to visualise pedestrians and cars trajectories, extract flow and density relation in a new shared space design and achieve solutions for optimal design features before implementation. This paper presents a three-layered microscopic mathematical model which is capable of representing the behaviour of pedestrians and vehicles in shared space layouts and it is implemented in a traffic simulation tool. The top layer calculates route maps based on static obstacles in the environment. It plans the shortest path towards agents' respective destinations by generating one or more intermediate targets. In the second layer, the Social Force Model (SFM) is modified and extended for mixed traffic to produce feasible trajectories. Since vehicle movements are not as flexible as pedestrian movements, velocity angle constraints are included for vehicles. The conflicts described in the third layer are resolved by rule-based constraints for shared space users. An optimisation algorithm is applied to determine the interaction parameters of the force-based model for shared space users using empirical data. This new three-layer microscopic model can be used to simulate shared space environments and assess, for example, new street designs

Non-local first-order modelling of crowd dynamics: a multidimensional framework with applications

In this work a physical modelling framework is presented, describing the intelligent, non-local, and anisotropic behaviour of pedestrians. Its phenomenological basics and constitutive elements are detailed, and a qualitative analysis is provided. Within this common framework, two first-order mathematical models, along with related numerical solution techniques, are derived. The models are oriented to specific real world applications: a one-dimensional model of crowd-structure interaction in footbridges and a two-dimensional model of pedestrian flow in an underground station with several obstacles and exits. The noticeable heterogeneity of the applications demonstrates the significance of the physical framework and its versatility in addressing different engineering problems. The results of the simulations point out the key role played by the physiological and psychological features of human perception on the overall crowd dynamics.Comment: 26 pages, 17 figure

Quantitative Description of Pedestrian Dynamics with a Force based Model

This paper introduces a space-continuous force-based model for simulating pedestrian dynamics. The main interest of this work is the quantitative description of pedestrian movement through a bottleneck. Measurements of flow and density will be presented and compared with empirical data. The results of the proposed model show a good agreement with empirical data. Furthermore, we emphasize the importance of volume exclusion in force-based models.Comment: 4 pages, 7 figures, 2009 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Joint Conferences on Web Intelligence and Intelligent Agent Technologies (WI-IAT 2009), 15-18 September 2009, in Milano, Italy, 200

Cellular Automata Models of Road Traffic

In this paper, we give an elaborate and understandable review of traffic cellular automata (TCA) models, which are a class of computationally efficient microscopic traffic flow models. TCA models arise from the physics discipline of statistical mechanics, having the goal of reproducing the correct macroscopic behaviour based on a minimal description of microscopic interactions. After giving an overview of cellular automata (CA) models, their background and physical setup, we introduce the mathematical notations, show how to perform measurements on a TCA model's lattice of cells, as well as how to convert these quantities into real-world units and vice versa. The majority of this paper then relays an extensive account of the behavioural aspects of several TCA models encountered in literature. Already, several reviews of TCA models exist, but none of them consider all the models exclusively from the behavioural point of view. In this respect, our overview fills this void, as it focusses on the behaviour of the TCA models, by means of time-space and phase-space diagrams, and histograms showing the distributions of vehicles' speeds, space, and time gaps. In the report, we subsequently give a concise overview of TCA models that are employed in a multi-lane setting, and some of the TCA models used to describe city traffic as a two-dimensional grid of cells, or as a road network with explicitly modelled intersections. The final part of the paper illustrates some of the more common analytical approximations to single-cell TCA models.Comment: Accepted for publication in "Physics Reports". A version of this paper with high-quality images can be found at: http://phdsven.dyns.cx (go to "Papers written"

From individual behaviour to an evaluation of the collective evolution of crowds along footbridges

This paper proposes a crowd dynamic macroscopic model grounded on microscopic phenomenological observations which are upscaled by means of a formal mathematical procedure. The actual applicability of the model to real world problems is tested by considering the pedestrian traffic along footbridges, of interest for Structural and Transportation Engineering. The genuinely macroscopic quantitative description of the crowd flow directly matches the engineering need of bulk results. However, three issues beyond the sole modelling are of primary importance: the pedestrian inflow conditions, the numerical approximation of the equations for non trivial footbridge geometries, and the calibration of the free parameters of the model on the basis of in situ measurements currently available. These issues are discussed and a solution strategy is proposed.Comment: 23 pages, 10 figures in J. Engrg. Math., 201

Guidelines for assessing pedestrian evacuation software applications

This paper serves to clearly identify and explain criteria to consider when evaluating the suitability of a pedestrian evacuation software application to assess the evacuation process of a building. Guidelines in the form of nine topic areas identify different modelling approaches adopted, as well as features / functionality provided by applications designed specifically for simulating the egress of pedestrians from inside a building. The paper concludes with a synopsis of these guidelines, identifying key questions (by topic area) to found an evaluation