Empirical Findings from an Ascending Stair Evacuation Exercise in a Subway Station

Crowd simulations have proven to be a valuable numerical tool for evacuation analysis. There is series of research and empirical evacuation studies for infrastructures and buildings. In contrast to research on evacuation via descending stairs, little attention has been given to ascending stairs, but they are an important criterion, especially in subway stations with high passenger frequencies. In this paper, we present the findings from an evacuation exercise in a subway station with long ascending stairs. The empirical findings showed an increasing walking time on the ascending stairs during evacuation. Also, the flow rate differs with higher flow rates at the beginning of the stairs and lower values at the end of the stairs. The mechanism behind these results has still to be investigated, but the findings already provide an interesting basis for modelling and validating evacuation simulations over long ascending stairs

Automated Quality Assessment of Space-Continuous Models for Pedestrian Dynamics

In this work we propose a methodology for assessment of pedestrian models continuous in space. With respect to the Kolmogorov-Smirnov distance between two data clouds, representing for instance simulated and the corresponding empirical data, we calculate an evaluation factor between zero and one. Based on the value of the herein developed factor, we make a statement about the goodness of the model under evaluation. Moreover this process can be repeated in an automatic way in order to maximize the above mentioned factor and hence determine the optimal set of model parameters.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures, accepted at the Proceedings of Traffic and Granular Flow '1

A unified framework for evaluating microscopic pedestrian simulation models

Abweichender Titel laut Übersetzung der Verfasserin/des VerfassersZsfassung in dt. SpracheMicroscopic simulation models are used in many applications for predicting pedestrian flows with high granularity. Current simulators do not allow for easy and quick switching between models. Moreover, reliable human movement data is still sparse, which is a prerequisite for model calibration and validation. These shortcomings inhibit to evaluate the capabilities of different models. This doctoral thesis develops for the first time a unified framework for the struc¬tured investigation on strengths and weaknesses of microscopic pedestrian simulation models. The empirical baseline is a highly accurate benchmark data set of 2674 human trajectories measured under real life conditions in a bidirectional corridor with a novel data collection approach using the Microsoft Kinect. The proposed simulation framework is built on a scalable and flexible system architecture to easily integrate different models. We investigate three Social Force approaches, a Cellular Automaton, the Optimal Reciprocal Collision Avoidance model and two variants of the Optimal Steps Model. A structured evaluation environment is introduced for assessing individual model capabilities to represent microscopic and macroscopic characteristics of human movement behavior. Using a simulation-based calibration procedure in our simulation framework, the parameter values for all models were estimated based on a defined set of evaluation measures. It was found that the calibration has improved the fit to the observed data set in all models. However, the grade to which individual models can be influenced by the calibration varies. The investigated models also reveal diverse capabilities concerning transferability to an independent data set. Our presented evaluation technique can easily be applied to a wider range of pedestrian modeling approaches. For future studies this will enhance the understanding of individual model characteristics and the comparison of novel modeling approaches to existing ones.13

Track-based finding of stopping pedestrians-a practical approach for analyzing a public infrastructure

Brändle N, Bauer D, Seer S. Track-based finding of stopping pedestrians-a practical approach for analyzing a public infrastructure. In: Intelligent Transportation Systems Conference, 2006. ITSC'06. IEEE. 2006: 115-120

Macroscopic pedestrian flow simulation for designing crowd control measures in public transport after special events

Bauer D, Seer S, Brändle N. Macroscopic pedestrian flow simulation for designing crowd control measures in public transport after special events. In: Proceedings of the 2007 summer computer simulation conference. 2007: 1035-1042

Design of decision rules for crowd controlling using macroscopic pedestrian flow simulation

Seer S, Brändle N, Bauer D. Design of decision rules for crowd controlling using macroscopic pedestrian flow simulation. In: Pedestrian and Evacuation Dynamics 2008. Springer; 2010: 577-583

Estimating pedestrian movement characteristics for crowd control at public transport facilities

Seer S, Bauer D, Brändle N, Ray M. Estimating pedestrian movement characteristics for crowd control at public transport facilities. In: 11th International IEEE Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems, 2008. Piscataway, NJ: IEEE; 2008: 742-747

Finding highly frequented paths in video sequences

Bauer D, Brändle N, Seer S, Pflugfelder R. Finding highly frequented paths in video sequences. In: ICPR 2006. 18th International Conference on Pattern Recognition, 2006. Vol. 1. Piscataway, NJ: IEEE; 2006: 387-391

Mind the gap: Boarding and alighting processes using the social force paradigm calibrated on experimental data

Rudloff C, Bauer D, Matyus T, Seer S. Mind the gap: Boarding and alighting processes using the social force paradigm calibrated on experimental data. In: 14th International IEEE Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSC). Piscataway, NJ: IEEE; 2011: 353-358.One of the few possibilities to increase the capacity of train lines is to make boarding and alighting more efficient. So far expensive experiments were needed to evaluate the effect of proposed changes to the train setup. This paper shows that a simulation model based on the social force paradigm and calibrated on measured data promises that in future simulations could be used to test new scenarios in a cheap and fast way