Bridging the gap Why we need to enhance current simulation models

Many models that simulate evacuations are state of the art and provide realistic insight to their users. However, simulating everyday situations, such as visitor flow through a museum or passenger flow through an airport, presents marked challenges; existing models reach their limit here. This contribution will introduce and highlight the gap between existing egress models and the difficulties found simulating, for instance, passenger flow or capacity analysis

Can we learn where people go?

In most agent-based simulators, pedestrians navigate from origins to destinations. Consequently, destinations are essential input parameters to the simulation. While many other relevant parameters as positions, speeds and densities can be obtained from sensors, like cameras, destinations cannot be observed directly. Our research question is: Can we obtain this information from video data using machine learning methods? We use density heatmaps, which indicate the pedestrian density within a given camera cutout, as input to predict the destination distributions. For our proof of concept, we train a Random Forest predictor on an exemplary data set generated with the Vadere microscopic simulator. The scenario is a crossroad where pedestrians can head left, straight or right. In addition, we gain first insights on suitable placement of the camera. The results motivate an in-depth analysis of the methodology

OpenBIM for Occupant Movement Analysis industry report: a perspective from the Building Room

The safety and comfort of building occupants are of vital importance. For building design and compliance checking concerning occupants’ safety in buildings, prescriptive codes are usually used. However, for more complex buildings the prescriptive rules are not always applicable, and therefore, a performance-based approach (engineering approach) is employed. This performance-based approach to fire safety which is also known as Fire Safety Engineering (FSE) utilizes either hand calculations or computer model simulations (using simulation tools) to determine whether the performance indicators are fulfilled according to regulations and then in turn establish if a building is compliant. Occupant Movement Analysis (OMA) includes aspects of non-emergency and emergency movement of people. Circulation modelling focuses on the non-emergency movement of people, whereas evacuation modelling as part of the FSE-based analysis focuses on the emergency movement of people. During the planning and lifecycle process of a building, circulation modelling plays an important role. It offers a deep insight into the building’s functionality and capacity concerning occupants’ flow and comfort, thus, improving space utilization and productivity. On the other hand, evacuation modelling is used to determine evacuation times and possible bottlenecks in the building’s design. In short, OMA has an important role in establishing occupants’ safety and comfort during the building lifecycle, particularly during the design phase. The use of Building Information Modelling (BIM) is increasing significantly but for OMA the adoption is still relatively slow, which impedes the realization of potential BIM benefits such as mitigating risk and cost reduction. The goal of this paper is to provide an insight into how buildingSMART International (bSI) is adding support for OMA requirements in the IFC Model. Work was initiated to develop a Information Delivery Manual (IDM) for OMA that focuses on capturing the data requirements including key simulation results produced by the pedestrian modelling tools. This work will not only incorporate properties into the IFC Model to meet the common needs of OMA data exchange requirements for the modelling tools but in turn also enable an open, connected iterative workflow. The following three broad use cases are presented in this paper to highlight the work which is currently underway: 1. Evacuation Analysis – based on The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) stages. 2. Evacuation Analysis – International (non-country specific). 3. Circulation Analysis – International (non-country specific)

The birth of a new BIM Standard: from PED 2018 to 2023, new parameters and workflows "Going Live" for everyone

Building Information Modelling (BIM) has become the de facto standard for the digital representation of buildings. However, from the pedestrian dynamics perspective, BIM Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) schema specification do not fully support data properties required for two-way data sharing with pedestrian modelling tools. An international team of academic and industry researchers, supported by buildingSMART International (bSI), is developing an Occupant Movement Analysis (OMA) standard. The project is focused on expanding the IFC schema specification to support workflows for pedestrian simulation tools and is close to completion. So far, multiple process maps and a list of data properties synchronised with several representative pedestrian modelling tools have been produced. This list of data properties was then converted into bSI's recommended flexible and machine interpretable Information Delivery Specification (IDS) format for specifying data exchange requirements and to add clarity. Currently, this is undergoing testing and review by the project team. Once completed, it will be submitted to bSI’s committees for review. Also, to support this work, a prototype open-source Add-in has been developed to demonstrate a two-way integrated data sharing between BIM authoring tools and pedestrian simulation tools. This standard will enhance data sharing between BIM authoring and pedestrian modelling tools by facilitating the capturing of the required data and addressing friction in multiple design iterations and reassessment

Integrating pedestrian simulation, tracking and event detection for crowd analysis

In this paper, an overall framework for crowd analysis is presented. Detection and tracking of pedestrians as well as detection of dense crowds is performed on image sequences to improve simulation models of pedestrian flows. Additionally, graph-based event detection is performed by using Hidden Markov Models on pedestrian trajectories utilizing knowledge from simulations. Experimental results show the benefit of our integrated framework using simulation and real-world data for crowd analysis

A glossary for research on human crowd dynamics

This article presents a glossary of terms that are frequently used in research onhuman crowds. This topic is inherently multidisciplinary as it includes work in and across computer science, engineering, mathematics, physics, psychology and social science, for example. We do not view the glossary presented here as a collection of finalised and formal definitions. Instead, we suggest it is a snapshot of current views and the starting point of an ongoing process that we hope will be useful in providing some guidance on the use of terminology to develop a mutual understanding across disciplines. The glossary was developed collaboratively during a multidisciplinary meeting. We deliberately allow several definitions of terms, to reflect the confluence of disciplines in the field. This alsoreflects the fact not all contributors necessarily agree with all definitions in this glossary

A Glossary for Research on Human Crowd Dynamics. In Collective Dynamics

This article presents a glossary of terms that are frequently used in research on human crowds. This topic is inherently multidisciplinary as it includes work in and across computer science, engineering, mathematics, physics, psychology and social science, for example. We do not view the glossary presented here as a collection of finalised and formal definitions. Instead, we suggest it is a snapshot of current views and the starting point of an ongoing process that we hope will be useful in providing some guidance on the use of terminology to develop a mutual understanding across disciplines. The glossary was developed collaboratively during a multidisciplinary meeting. We deliberately allow several definitions of terms, to reflect the confluence of disciplines in the field. This also reflects the fact not all contributors necessarily agree with all definitions in this glossary