In-service video-vibration monitoring for identification of walking patterns in an office floor

Abstract

Footfall-induced vibrations in office floors can create significant problems for the occupants and facility owners. Such vibrations cannot be modeled by traditional load models since the vibration response of a floor depends on nondeterministic factors such as walking paths, pacing rates, stride lengths, busyness of the floor, interactions among the occupants, etc. In this work, a novel simultaneous video-vibration monitoring system has been developed in order to study the complex walking patterns in office floors. This system is able to capture occupants' movement on the monitored floor using cameras, extract their walking trajectories, and measure the vibration levels across the floor using wireless sensing units. The proposed system was installed and tested in an open workplace. The resulting trajectories were statistically analyzed to obtain useful information that reflect the actual walking patterns of the occupants. The output of the video monitoring exercise can be used in future studies to train a data-driven crowd model capable of simulating realistic scenarios of people movement on the floor. Copyright (2018) by International Institute of Acoustics & Vibration.All rights reserved.The authors would like to thank Qatar Rail for providing an access to the office floor monitored in this work. The financial support for this research was provided by Qatar National Research Fund, QNRF (a member of Qatar Foundation) via the National Priorities Research Program (NPRP), Project Number: NPRP 8-836-2-353. The statements made herein are solely the responsibility of the authors