Collective Dynamics (E-Journal)
Not a member yet
185 research outputs found
Sort by
A Review of Pedestrian Flow Characteristics and Level of Service over Different Pedestrian Facilities
Full text linkPresent paper reviewed the past studies on pedestrian flow characteristics (such as speed, flow, density, space, free-flow speed and jam density) and development of Pedestrian Level of Service (PLOS) for various pedestrian facilities (i.e., sidewalk, walkway, crosswalk, grade separated, stairways and escalators). Fundamental relationships (between speed and density) were observed over different facilities and were found to be significantly different. The fundamental relationships for sidewalk facility predicted the range of free flow speeds to be 65 − 85 m/min and jam densities to be 3.5 − 5.3 ped/m2. The minimum and maximum pedestrian speeds over sidewalk facility in different countries observed were 52 m/min and 98 m/min respectively, with a mean speed of 79 m/min. The male pedestrians walked at 4 − 9 m/min higher speed in comparison to their female counterparts; while the older pedestrians walked at 15 − 20 m/min lower speed than the younger ones over the various types of crosswalk facilities. Similarly, speed-density relationships for ascending and descending stairways showed that the difference between the two directions varied between 4 − 12 m/min, and that the speed was significantly higher in case of descending direction. Moreover, the jam densities for stairways were also observed to be lower in case of descending direction, as the pedestrians generally maintain higher gap (than in ascending direction) with other pedestrians in front to avoid pushing and the risk of falling down. The flow characteristics were significantly influenced by the type of facility, width, age, gender and location of the study. Primarily factors such as physique (height), culture (dress), attractions (presence of hawkers located along sidewalks), friction (due to parked vehicles), purpose of walking trip and environmentl conditions were the main reasons for pedestrians of countries such as Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Sri-Lanka to walk significantly slower than the counterparts pedestrians in the USA, UK or Canada.The review conducted on the PLOS mainly looked into the type of survey conducted (qualitative vs. quantitative), LOS parameters and the various software/models used in development of LOS. Researchers from the USA and Japan preferably used both qualitative and quantitative approaches in defining LOS over sidewalks; while in India, China and Malaysia qualitative method was highly preferred. Pedestrian volume, safety, surface, obstruction and width were observed as essential parameters for qualitative survey while density, flow rate, pedestrian speed and width were used in quantitative survey for sidewalks. In developing the PLOS over sidewalk facility; Conjoint analysis, Landis method, HCM method, affinity propagation cluster algorithm and Gainesville method were preferred by various researchers. Studies conducted over crosswalk facility measured space, flow rate, vehicle volume and delay as the most significant factors in developing LOS based on quantitative technique; while vehicle speed, pedestrian volume and traffic control were mostly used for LOS development using qualitative technique.
Simulation and Optimization of Ground Traffic on Airports using Cellular Automata
Full text linkDue to increasing numbers of airplane operations on international airports in Germany, the efficiency of airport-ground operations becomes more and more important. Some airports, such as the international airport of Duesseldorf, have reached their capacity limit and need major improvements in order to handle the continuously growing number of airplanes and passengers. Further expansion of the airport is not possible because of limited space. To improve airport-ground operations, simulations are useful for evaluating suggestions in advance and for avoiding poor planning. Therefore the CAMAT-Model was developed (Cellular Automaton Model for Airport Traffic), seeking to simulate the dynamics of all airplanes as realistically as possible. Improvements on the current layout can be simulated as well as new taxiways and new taxiing routes. In this paper, we present the new CAMAT-Model and give examples of possible improvements at the airport of Duesseldorf and their influence on average rolling times of airplanes
Modeling Trajectory-level Behaviors using Time Varying Pedestrian Movement Dynamics
Full text linkWe present a novel interactive multi-agent simulation algorithm to model pedestrian movement dynamics. We use statistical techniques to compute the movement patterns and motion dynamics from 2D trajectories extracted from crowd videos. Our formulation extracts the dynamic behavior features of real-world agents and uses them to learn movement characteristics on the fly. The learned behaviors are used to generate plausible trajectories of virtual agents as well as for long-term pedestrian trajectory prediction. Our approach can be integrated with any trajectory extraction method, including manual tracking, sensors, and online tracking methods. We highlight the benefits of our approach on many indoor and outdoor scenarios with noisy, sparsely sampled trajectory in terms of trajectory prediction and data-driven pedestrian simulation
Oppilatio+ - A data and cognitive science based approach to analyze pedestrian flows in networks
Full text linkPublic transport services are a widespread and environmentally friendly option for mobility. In the majority of cases, passengers of public transport services will have to walk from a subway, train, or bus station to their desired travel destination. In an urban environment with a network of narrow streets, this can lead to crowd congestions during rush hour, due to the fact that passengers tend to arrive in waves. In order to monitor and analyze such crowding behavior, city planners, crowd managers, and organizers of public events must ascertain which routes these pedestrians will take from the respective station to their destination. The Oppilatio+ approach is suitable for solving this problem. It is an easy-to-apply approach to predict way-finding behavior with a minimal set of information. The necessary data includes the schedule of incoming transport vehicles at the stations and the time-stamped count of pedestrians at the respective destinations. Under these conditions, the Oppilatio+ approach is suitable for estimating the distribution of pedestrians on all possible walkways between stations and destinations. This information helps crowd control experts to recognize weak spots in the infrastructure and help event organizers to ensure an undisturbed arrival at their event. We validated our approach using two field experiments. The first one was a field study on a public event, and the second one was a case study for a large Swiss train station
Proceedings of Pedestrian and Evacuation Dynamics 2016
Full text linkThe 8th International Conference on Pedestrian and Evacuation Dynamics (PED 2016) has been held on October 17–21, 2016 in Hefei, China. PED 2016 Conference offered an opportunity for professionals and scientists with different backgrounds to present and discuss new findings and applications in the field of pedestrian and evacuation dynamics and associated human behavior. The conference aims to provide suggestions for policy makers, planners, designers and emergency management to solve real world problems.Conference topics included, but was not limited to:Pedestrian movement mechanismsPedestrian behavior during disasters: theories, analysis, conclusionsEvacuation and pedestrian data collection from experiments and real eventsData collection techniquesModel developmentLarge-scale and transport modeling methodsModel validation/calibrationPublic transport transfer terminalsRegional evacuationOperational management of highly populated facilitiesEngineering guidanceCitation:Please cite the full conference proceedings as follows:Song, W., Ma, J., Fu, L.; Proceedings of Pedestrian and Evacuation Dynamics 2016, Collective Dynamics, A11, 1-618 (2016). DOI 10.17815/CD.2016.11Single articles inside the proceedings should be cited as:Authors; Title.In: Proceedings of Pedestrian and Evacuation Dynamics 2016, Collective Dynamics, pages (2016)Example:Dambalmath, P., Muhamad, B., Haug, E., Löhner, R.; Fundamental Diagrams for Specific Very High Density Crowds. In: Proceedings of Pedestrian and Evacuation Dynamics 2016, Collective Dynamics, 6-11 (2016
On the Boate Kiss Fire and the Brazilian Safety Legislation - What we can learn
Full text linkBrazil was recently the scenario of a great tragedy in the fire at Kiss nightclub, where 242 people were killed. The starting point of the fire was the use of a pyrotechnic device over an acoustic coating made of polyurethane foam. The causalities were caused mainly by asphyxia and inhalation of toxic gases in a very fast smoke expansion. However, several additional causes contributed to the amount of damage and human losses. The accident investigations emphasized the necessity to discuss details in the applicable Brazilian legislation. In this work, the tragedy of Kiss nightclub is presented and the some of their mainly aspects discussed. The Brazilian standard (ABNT NBR 9077) to determine the dimension of emergency exits is also presented. Then, a computational simulation of evacuation process in an environment externally similar to Kiss nightclub with different width exits and populations is performed using the software Fuga. It was found that, in spite of the configurations of Kiss nightclub have had a fundamental role in tragedy, the current Brazilian standard was not appropriate for the design of such environment and should not have been used. Moreover, clear and more rigorous standards also need to be further discussed, particularly for panic situations. At the end, some considerations are made in order to improve the standards about the dimensioning of emergency exits
Frame vs. Trajectory Analyses of Pedestrian Dynamics Asymmetries in a Staircase Landing
Full text linkReal-life, out-of-laboratory, measurements of pedestrian walking dynamics allow extensive and fully-resolved statistical analyses. However, data acquisition in real-life is subjected to the randomness and heterogeneity that characterizes crowd flows over time. In a typical real-life location, disparate flow conditions follow one another in random order: for instance, a low density pedestrian co-flow dynamics may suddenly turn into a high density counter-flow scenario and then back again. Isolating occurrences of similar flow conditions within the acquired data is a paramount first step in the analyses in order to avoid spurious statistics and to enable qualitative comparisons.In this paper we extend our previous investigation on the asymmetric pedestrian dynamics on a staircase landing, where we collected a large statistical database of measurements from ad hoc continuous recordings. This contribution has a two-fold aim: first, method-wise, we discuss an analysis workflow to consider large-scale experimental measurements, suggesting two querying approaches to automatically extract occurrences of similar flow scenarios out of datasets. These pursue aggregation of similar scenarios on either a frame or a trajectory basis. Second, we employ these two different perspectives to further explore asymmetries in the pedestrian dynamics in our measurement site. We report cross-comparisons of statistics of pedestrian positions, velocities and accelerations vs. flow conditions as well as vs. querying approach
Menge: A Modular Framework for Simulating Crowd Movement
Full text linkWe present Menge, a cross-platform, extensible, modular framework for simulating pedestrian movement in a crowd. Menge's architecture is inspired by an implicit decomposition of the problem of simulating crowds into component subproblems. These subproblems can typically be solved in many ways; different combinations of subproblem solutions yield crowd simulators with likewise varying properties. Menge creates abstractions for those subproblems and provides a plug-in architecture so that a novel simulator can be dynamically configured by connecting built-in and bespoke implementations of solutions to the various subproblems. Use of this type of framework could facilitate crowd simulation research, evaluation, and applications by reducing the cost of entering the domain, facilitating collaboration, and making comparisons between algorithms simpler. We show how the Menge framework is compatible with many prior models and algorithms used in crowd simulation and illustrate its flexibility via a varied set of scenarios and applications
The Inflection Point of the Speed-Density Relation and the Social Force Model
Full text linkIt has been argued that the speed-density diagram of pedestrian movement has an inflection point. This inflection point was found empirically in investigations of closed-loop single-file pedestrian movement.The reduced complexity of single-file movement does not only allow a higher precision for the evaluation of empirical data, but it also significantly simplifies analytical considerations. This is especially true if one assumes homogeneous conditions, i.e. neglects temporal variations (consider time averages, neglect stop-and-go waves), individual differences of pedestrians (all simulated pedestrians have identical parameters) and investigates only steady-state (not the initial phase). As will be shown in this contribution one then can make a transition from the microscopic to a continuous and macroscopic perspective.Building on that it will be shown that certain (common) variants of the Social Force Model (SFM) do not produce an inflection point in the speed-density diagram if – assuming periodic boundary conditions – infinitely many pedestrians contribute to the force computed for one pedestrian. It will furthermore be shown that if – in said 1d movement situation – one only considers nearest neighbors for the computation of the inter-pedestrian forces the Social Force Model in the continuous description results in the so called Kladek formula for the speed-density relation. Since the Kladek formula exhibits the desired inflection point this observation is used as a motivation for an extension of the Social Force Model which allows to transform the continuous description of the SFM continuously to the Kladek formula and which also exhibits the inflection point in the speed density relation. It will be shown then, that this extended SFM yields astonishingly similar speed density relations as the original SFM when only a fixed limited number of (nearest) pedestrians are considered in the computation of the inter-pedestrian force.Finally it will be discussed, if also the description of the speed-density diagram for (motorized, four-wheel) vehicular and/or bicycle traffic could benefit from these measures
Autonomous Decentralized Control of Traffic Signals that can Adapt to Changes in Traffic
Full text linkoai:ojs.collective-dynamics.eu:article/1A major challenge for traffic signal control is adapting to unpredictable changes in traffic. To address this issue, we propose an autonomous decentralized control scheme for traffic signals that is based on physics. More specifically, “virtual impulses” given by red signals or preceding cars, which are defined in a similar manner as the impulses generally used in physics, are calculated at each traffic signal by using an optimal velocity model, and traffic signals are switched to reduce these virtual impulses. We performed simulations under various traffic conditions, and the results showed that the proposed control scheme works adaptively and resiliently in response to each set of circumstances. Thus, the virtual impulse can be a key physical quantity for designing adaptive traffic systems