Fundamental diagrams of pedestrian flow characteristics: A review

European Transport Research Review, Sep 2017

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. 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.

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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)


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Lakshmi Devi Vanumu, K. Ramachandra Rao, Geetam Tiwari. Fundamental diagrams of pedestrian flow characteristics: A review, European Transport Research Review, 2017, pp. 49, Volume 9, Issue 4, DOI: 10.1007/s12544-017-0264-6