Pedestrian dynamics in single-file movement of crowd with different age compositions

An aging population is bringing new challenges to the management of escape routes and facility design in many countries. This paper investigates pedestrian movement properties of crowd with different age compositions. Three pedestrian groups are considered: young student group, old people group and mixed group. It is found that traffic jams occur more frequently in mixed group due to the great differences of mobilities and self-adaptive abilities among pedestrians. The jams propagate backward with a velocity 0.4 m/s for global density around 1.75 m-1 and 0.3 m/s for higher than 2.3 m-1. The fundamental diagrams of the three groups are obviously different from each other and cannot be unified into one diagram by direct non-dimensionalization. Unlike previous studies, three linear regimes in mixed group but only two regimes in young student group are observed in the headway-velocity relation, which is also verified in the fundamental diagram. Different ages and mobilities of pedestrians in a crowd cause the heterogeneity of system and influence the properties of pedestrian dynamics significantly. It indicates that the density is not the only factor leading to jams in pedestrian traffic. The composition of crowd has to be considered in understanding pedestrian dynamics and facility design.Comment: 11 pages, 13 figures, 3 table

Properties of pedestrian movement at signalized crosswalk

Actual manuals and literature report different descriptions on the capacity of crosswalk. In this paper, pedestrian movement properties on signalized crosswalk is studied by carrying out series of experimentsunder laboratory condition. The influence of the directional split ratio in bidirectional streams on the capacity of crosswalk is investigated. It is found that the maximum reduction of the capacity occurs at directional splitratio of 0.5, which is different from the descriptions in High Capacity Manual (HCM) but agrees with the findings in [1]. However, the observed maximum flow is higher than that in previous studies. By comparing thefundamental diagrams among unidirectional flow, bidirectional flow in corridor and on crosswalk, significant differences are observed for rho> 2.0 m-2. Interestingly, the capacity of bidirectional flow on crosswalk is closeto unidirectional flow in corridor, which is higher than bidirectional flow in corridor

Spatial analysis for crowds in multi-directional flows based on large-scale experiments

This study presents key findings of observed datasets in a nearly zero-energy office building for over 66 working days from June to mid-September in 2019, Luxembourg. Measurements of indoor and outdoor environmental parameters as well as user-shade override adjustments were extracted from the KNX-based building management system (BMS) in 47 office rooms located in three typical floor levels. Relative frequency and "rate of change" of blind use were analysed in terms of window orientation, occupancy level, and the time of the day. Logistic regression and data mining techniques were used to identify potentially useful and understandable occupant behaviour patterns and reveal the main triggers behind blind adjustments. The well-designed automation system together with the inner glare protection formed the base of very low user-shade interactions. A mean of 0.184 manual blind adjustments per day per office. Eight regression sub-models were developed and all were incapable of predicting user-shade lowering and raising events. Alternatively, two user profiles were mined based on 20 rules gained from clustering analysis: user (ß) was representing the passive user, and user (μ) the medium user. Overall, we conclude that the automated shading system in this building is satisfactory, user-friendly, and a robust control system

Fundamental Diagrams of Single-File Pedestrian Flow for Different Age Groups

In this paper properties of pedestrian movement are investigated with series of single-file experiments by considering the age composition of the crowd. Pedestrian trajectories with different age groups (young students group, old people group and mixed group) are extracted from the software PeTrack. It is found that the free velocity and maximum specific flow of young student group are the largest among three groups due to different mobility between young students and old people. More interestingly, the maximum specific flow of mixed group is smaller than that of old group, which indicates the jam occurs more easily in crowd composed of people with different movement abilities than that with homogeneous composition. At last, a nondimensional method considering pedestrian free velocity and body size is used to scale the fundamental diagrams for different age groups. The study is helpful to understand evolution of pedestrian dynamics with different ages

Homogeneity and Activeness of Crowd on Aged Pedestrian Dynamics

AbstractAn aging population is bringing new challenges to the management of escape routes and facility design in many countries. In this paper the movement properties of middle- and old-aged adults are studied with series of single-file movement experiments under laboratory conditions. The fundamental diagrams for two different groups of pedestrians and time-space diagrams are compared. For the groups with different composition and status, the fundamental diagrams are totally different but maintain the same trend. Active crowd leads to inhomogeneous pedestrian flow but higher flow rate, while inactive pedestrians prefer to keep pace with others or keep larger personal space, which leads to more jams and stop-and-go waves. Density and inhomogeneous of speed do not always play main roles on the appearance of stop-and-go

Characteristics of pedestrian's evacuation in a room under invisible conditions

In this paper, movement characteristics of pedestrian's evacuation under invisible conditions are investigated through a series of evacuation experiments. The typical evacuation behaviors of occupants including moving along walls as well as different conflict resolutions are observed. Moreover, individual evacuation time, movement distance, distance to walls and individual velocity during evacuations are analyzed based on the extracted trajectories. Spatial distribution of evacuees is quantified by using the variance-mean ratio and the nearest-neighbor analysis. It is found that evacuees are randomly distributed in the room at the beginning of evacuation. However, after the start of the experiment, individuals search cautiously their surrounding and start to walk along walls. Under this circumstance aggregated distributions are formed. This study is helpful to understand pedestrian's behavior and develop efficient guidance strategy for crowds under poor visibility. Moreover, the data obtained from the experiment can be used for model validation under invisible conditions

Fundamental diagrams for multidirectional pedestrian flows

Fundamental diagrams for uni-, bi- and multidirectional flows at corridors and crossings are investigated by a series of experiments under laboratory conditions. At high densities pedestrians are forced to make detours or even change the intended destinations. These unintended movements lead to an overestimation of the performance of crossings. To consider these effects in the determination of the capacities the fundamental diagrams are measured using advanced methods. In comparison to classical methods, significant differences relating to the capacities are found. The fundamental diagrams are compared with data of uni-, bi-, and multidirectional flows and with data of the literature