Fundamental diagrams of pedestrian flow characteristics: A review
Eur. Transp. Res. Rev.
Fundamental diagrams of pedestrian flow characteristics: A review
Lakshmi Devi Vanumu 0 1
K. Ramachandra Rao 0 1
Geetam Tiwari 0 1
0 Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology , Delhi, Hauz Khas, New Delhi 110016 , India
1 Lakshmi Devi Vanumu
Introduction The dimensionality of pedestrian infrastructure facilities have a great influence on pedestrian movements and a considerable impact on natural environment of the facility. Understanding the pedestrian movements are crucial to estimate the capacity of the system accurately, especially in the transportation terminals such as railway stations, bus terminals, airports and so forth, where large crowd gathers and transfers. To have a safe and comfortable movement in normal situation and also a quick evacuation in emergency situation, pedestrian movement patterns should be analysed and modelled properly. Purpose Once the behaviour of pedestrians is established in terms of speed and density with respect to the environment, even for the colossal systems, the pedestrian flow characteristics can be modelled by applying extremely efficient simulations. The main modelling element in the context of flow models is the fundamental relationship among speed, flow and density. The objective of this study is to review the fundamental diagrams of pedestrian flow characteristics developed for various flow types and geometric elements. This paper also discusses the design values of flow parameters and walking speeds of pedestrians at various facilities.
Fundamental diagrams; Pedestrian flow characteristics; Walking speed; Pedestrian infrastructure
-
Methods In order to achieve the goal of this paper, we
presented a systematic review of fundamental diagrams of
pedestrian flow characteristics developed by using various
approaches such as field, experimental and simulation.
Conclusions After a thorough review of literature, this paper
identifies certain research gaps which provides an opportunity
to enhance the understanding of fundamental diagrams of
pedestrian flow characteristics.
1 Introduction
Understanding the pedestrian movement is complex when
compared to vehicular movement as pedestrians have freedom
to move in two dimensions. Also the graphical representation
of pedestrian trajectories in both longitudinal and lateral
direction is complicated. May [
1
] emphasized that BThe two major
differences between pedestrian and vehicular flow are the
numerical values of flow characteristics and the use of lanes or
width to define stream files. The lanes for the vehicular
facilities may be well-defined whereas for pedestrian facilities, the
facility width may vary over time and flow condition^. While
comparing the vehicular flow and pedestrian flow, Treiber and
Kesting [
2
] illustrate that every pedestrian has a desired
direction in addition to the desired walking speed. Hence the
desired velocity of a pedestrian is a vectorial quantity. Moreover,
presence of cultural differences make the design values of
pedestrian facilities in different regions to vary greatly. So it
may not be appropriate to adopt one region design values for
the design of another region’s pedestrian facilities. Many
researchers [
3–18
] have conducted considerable amount of
studies on pedestrian dynamics and developed numerous models
over the past decades. For developing these models,
researchers adopted different approaches such as experimental,
field and simulation.
Empirical data from the field observations are essential for
calibration and validation of any model. Acquiring
permissions for collecting such data in public transport stations and
some restricted areas is difficult because of security and
privacy issues. Apart from these, the camera arrangements,
tracking of pedestrians, lighting conditions, uncontrollable
conditions etc. would make the data collection process complicated.
In order to overcome the above problems researchers conduct
experiments by simulating the real situations under controlled
conditions either in open or closed areas with pedestrians as
subjects [
4
]. Moreover, obtaining the practical data in the
emergency situations or experimenting the panic situations is
troublesome and the data obtained from these two methods
may not be accurate and reliable. Hence simulation modelling
would be a better approach to test Bwhat if scenarios^ in the
complex systems, especially evacuation of people in
emergency situations. A field and an experimental study has been
carried out on the same stair case [
9
]. In this study, even
though exact quantification of error is not given between the
values of experimental and field observations, it was found
that, for a particular density the corresponding flow values are
slightly higher in experiments compared to field studies. Qu
[
19
] compared the field observed walking speeds and
simulated walking speeds on stairs and found the range of relative
error 0.41 to 20.53 with an average relat (...truncated)