Pedestrian exit choice behavior during an evacuation - a comparison study between field and VR experiment

Understanding pedestrian exit choice behavior during emergency situations is important for improving evacuation efficiency. Virtual Reality is a promising technique that can be used to study pedestrian evacuation behavior. However, studies comparing evacuation behavior in real and virtual environments are still scarce. This paper explores...

A Markov-chain activity-based model for pedestrians in office buildings

As the number of people working in office buildings increases, there is an urgent need to improve building services, such as lighting and temperature control, within these buildings to increase energy efficiency and well-being of occupants. A pedestrian behaviour model that simulates office occupants’ movements and locations can provide the high...

The influence of the interaction characteristics on the movement dynamics of pedestrians

One of the fundamental properties of pedestrian simulation models is their capability to predict the future movement dynamics of pedestrians depending on the current state of the pedestrian traffic flow, more specically the walking behaviour of neighbouring pedestrians. This paper investigates the influence of the interaction characteristics on...

Comparing three types of real-time data collection techniques: Counting cameras, Wi-Fi sensors and GPS trackers

Nowadays, many large scale events are organised in urban areas that are not designed to accomodate these large visitor flows, as not only the sheer number of people is larger than anticipated, but also their behaviour is different. For a timely deployment of crowd management measures, continuous information on the real-time traffic state on the...

Estimating travel times using Wi-Fi sensor data

Determining travel time information from Wi-Fi (or Bluetooth) sensors is not trivial due to various (often technical) reasons. In this contribution, we focus on the problem of distinguishing travel time from the time people spend performing activities (e.g. fuelling the car, standing still to watch the scenery, buying a train ticket). More...

Proposition and testing of a conceptual model describing the movement of individual pedestrians within a crowd

Our understanding of crowd movements has rapidly improved over the course of the last decades. This study shows that the empirical research has not kept up with the pace of the simulation studies. Based on an extensive literature review, this study proposes a conceptual model describing the movements of individuals within a crowd. The model...

Optimal crowd evacuation

This paper deals with the optimal allocation of routes, destination, and departure times to members of a crowd, for instance in case of an evacuation or another hazardous situation in which the people need to leave the area as quickly as possible. The generic approach minimizes the evacuation times, considering the demand dependent waiting times...

Crowd movements during exceptional events