Experimental Study of Phase Transition in Pedestrian Flow

The transition between low and high density phases is a typical feature of systems with social interactions. This contribution focuses on simple evacuation design of one room with one entrance and one exit; four passing-through experiments were organized and evaluated by means of automatic image processing. The phase of the system, determined by travel time and occupancy, is evaluated with respect to the inflow, a controlled boundary condition. Critical values of inflow and outflow were described with respect to the transition from low density to congested state. Moreover, microscopic analysis of travel time is provided.Comment: To appear in proceedings of Pedestrian and Evacuation Dynamics 2014, Transportation Research Procedia, Elsevie

Experimental Analysis of Two-Dimensional Pedestrian Flow in front of the Bottleneck

This contribution presents experimental study of two-dimensional pedestrian flow with the aim to capture the pedestrian behaviour within the cluster formed in front of the bottleneck. Two experiments of passing through a room with one entrance and one exit were arranged according to phase transition study in Ezaki et al. (2012), the inflow rate was regulated to obtain different walking modes. By means of automatic image processing, pedestrians' paths are extracted from camera records to get actual velocity and local density. Macroscopic information is extracted by means of virtual detector and leaving times of pedestrians. The pedestrian's behaviour is evaluated by means of density and velocity. Different approaches of measurement are compared using several fundamental diagrams. Two phases of crowd behaviour have been recognized and the phase transition was described.Comment: In proceedings of Traffic and Granullar Flow 2013, Springe

Microscopic Travel Time Analysis of Bottleneck Experiments

This contribution provides a microscopic experimental study of pedestrian motion in front of the bottleneck. Identification of individual pedestrians in conducted experiments enables to explain the high variance of travel time by heterogeneity of the crowd. Some pedestrians are able to push effectively through the crowd, some get trapped in the crowd for significantly longer time. This ability to push through the crowd is associated with the slope of individual linear model of the dependency of the travel time on the number of pedestrians in front of the bottleneck. Further detailed study of the origin of such ability is carried out by means of the route choice, i.e. strategy whether to bypass the crowd or to walk directly through it. The study has revealed that the ability to push through the crowd is a combination of aggressiveness in conflicts and willingness to overtake the crowd.Comment: To appear in Transportmetrica A: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/23249935.2017.141942