Different leader-follower behavior may be observed in models, such as group gathering, backtracking, and flexibility of the group. However, a comparison of these behaviors resulting in possible substantially different estimates of optimal evacuation procedures is lacking. Hence, we developed an Agent-based model in combination with exploratory modeling to compare backtracking, group gathering, and the possibility to change to another leader and investigate their influence on the evacuation and response time to receive a robust result. The results showed that backtracking and flexibility of the group increased the evacuation time. Whereby group gathering impacts the response time. In addition, the combination of behaviors increases the influence on evacuation and response time. Further research needs to test these results with empirical studies. Furthermore, the impact of other leader-follower behavior needs to be investigated.

This research investigates the question how the choice of scenarios and metrics influences the calibration of pedestrian simulation models. By calibrating a pedestrian model using different combinations of scenarios and metrics and comparing the results it was concluded that it matters what scenarios and metrics are included during the calibration. The implication of this is that one should calibrate a pedestrian model based on its intended usage and that this should be leading in the choice of which scenarios and metrics to use.

Over the last decade, summer recreation in urban green-blue open spaces has become increasingly popular in Amsterdam, but so has the amount of reported nuisance because of summer recreation. In this thesis, the nuisance that has been reported by citizens during the summer recreation season from 2020 has been analysed by coding the reports in Atlas.TI, and using a survey from the Muncipality of Amsterdam as a verification. There are two locations where large amounts of nuisance reports have been filed, the Bogortuin and Park Somerlust, and several smaller locations with quay walls in the Oostelijk Havengebied and on the Amstel river. The content on the individual nuisance experience in the reports has been separated in observations, providing the nuisance causes, and evaluations, providing the nuisance impact. Recreation in it self is not problematic per se, but the presence of large groups of youngsters and recreation during the evening hours and at night is. This impacts local residents because of noise nuisance, especially at night, and pollution of waste and public urination. The character of summer recreation nuisance can be classified as both physical and social nuisance that is experienced during the evening hours, on weekend days and when it’s dry and warm. Implemented interventions have been evaluated and together with proposed interventions been analysed with the prevention pyramid. The measures that deal with the physical nuisance, temporary public toilets and an increase of waste capacity are in general reviewed positively. One successful intervention on social nuisance is the anchoring ban with a buoy line in the water to prevent noise nuisance from boats. None of the measures has been designed in an integrated way, using all the levels of the pyramid.  

This research aims at analyzing route choice behavior of E-bikers, in terms of which factors play a role and to what extent. The research is performed based on E-bikers route data in Ghent. Two interesting developments are aimed to include as well, in terms of multi-attribute cost functions as input for route generation and including land use attributes to cyclist’s route choice models.

During the influx to mass events in the past, situations have regularly arisen that people experienced as unpleasant or even unsafe. Nowadays, many researchers focus on regulating this influx by influencing travel choices, where only little attention is paid to travellers’ preferences. This research identifies the preferences of different type of visitors towards receiving information, and the extent to which visitors with different information profiles act on the information messages they receive. A survey was distributed (N=378), and the number of variables was reduced by performing an Exploratory Factor Analysis. The Latent Class Cluster Analysis distinguished three clusters based on their information message preferences. The results show that people are most interested in receiving information via email a few days before departure and that it is challenging to inform them at a later time. The most impressionable cluster mainly consists of young people, unfamiliar with the event area. Event organisations can apply the results by better-aligning communication with the preferences of their visitors. The differences in behavioural intentions between the clusters turned out to be limited. This must be further investigated since it is not in line with expectations.

Changes to ecosystems due to human activity have occurred more quickly in the previous 65 years than at any other period in history, this has resulted in an irreversible loss in biodiversity worldwide. A direct consequence is a decrease in ecosystem services - the benefits for humans that are provided by ecology - which are needed to keep especially cities liveable places. It is therefore crucial that cities are going to be developed more sustainably. Several theories acknowledge that for sustainable urban development, a shift is needed from a fragmented approach to a systematic approach to development. Therefore, this thesis has studied the potential of systems thinking to make ecology more important in the process of urban development. This has been done through document analysis and semi-structured interviews, which clarified how ecology is approached in the current process. It emphasized the current socio-technical landscape we are in, where ecology is still something that is controlled by humans and where urban ecology is not acknowledged as a distinct urban system. The interviews have been used to indicate the challenges and opportunities for systems thinking to change this landscape. This has formed the foundation of preliminary recommendations that have been validated through a workshop. Challenges like other interests, soft concept and no value can be overcome by various niche developments, tools that help in quantifying or monetising ecology so a value can be created that is interesting for developers, or help can be given to municipalities to set requirements on ecology. Using these tools, the context and its systems should always be considered for ecology not to be reduced to technical features, and no optimal ecological change can be created. Tools should also be used in a pre-initiative phase, where core challenges in an area, main drivers of developers and common goals of stakeholders can be established. Involving a wide range of stakeholders influences people to think more broadly and deeply about themes. Especially involving ecologists and maintenance departments in the design phase can create flexible designs that are future-proof and implemented successfully. Besides, ecologists, who know how to use language and create more chances in ecology instead of burdens and relate ecology to other themes, should be involved throughout the different phases of urban development as they often can make it more interesting for other disciplines. This eventually benefits the desired transition towards a landscape where the paradigm around urban ecology is entirely accepted, which results in the perception of ecology as something that is equal to humans and is therefore always on an equal level or even more important as the social and economic system ultimately benefitting the loss of biodiversity.

Route choice of cyclists recently became a hot topic of research for different disciplines such as transport and urban planning. Among other factors that influence these route choices, the urban environment has been identified as one in a network, road or aesthetic level. However, how the morphology of the built environment influences the cyclists remains rather unexplored. Considering that two routes are equally distant and safe, would a cyclist choose the most idyllic route in terms of its spatial openness? This thesis aims to explore the extent that the visible views of the urban environment affect the route choosing of a cyclist while traveling in the center of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. It also For this purpose, 127 GPS trajectories of the Fietstelweek dataset of 2015 are compared with alternative routes suggested by OpenStreetMap (OSM) via the OpenRouteService Directions API. The suggested alternatives can be either the fastest routes, the longest routes or those recommended by OSM (in terms of travel distance, travel time or safety. Throughout this MSc thesis a methodology based on the visibility of the cyclistis proposed. The visibility analysisis based on the ray casting algorithm in a 3D environment and gives as an output 3D isovists. The 3D isovists are used in order to measure the spatial openness as the ratio of the amount of visible sky, visible buildings and visible ground, as well as the shape of the 3D isovist itself. Opposite to similar researches that are performing the visibility analysis on the actual GPS routes, this thesis project applies the visibility analysis to a simplified version of the OSM street network in the centre of Amsterdam. The simplified OSM street network consists of street segments, the nodes of which represent real road intersections. The output of the visibility analysis per street segment is later mapped to the GPS trajectories and the alternative routes as an aggregated value. Finally, the routes are compared to each other with the ANOVA statistical method (N=127) and the Tukey’s post hoc test, resulting to a quantification of the differences of the GPS routes in terms of spatial openness. The results of the statistical analysis indicate the importance of the distance in the cyclists route choices but also the importance of the ratio of buildings and visible sky, the ratio of buildings and ground as well as a significant preference of the cyclists towards non-homogeneous routes with variation on the street profiles. We consider the methodology as an interesting proposal of measuring attributes that are difficult to be interpreted by using the traditional space syntax methodology and as a new way to provide design guidelines of the city to urban planners and architects when a detailed 3D environment is provided.

In recent years, cycling has attracted increasing attention as a sustainable alternative to private car use. In cities across the world, strategies are put in place to improve existing cycling infrastructure. This raises the question of how cyclists move through a city and what part of the road network attracts the most cyclists. Prior studies on cycling behaviour have revealed that cyclists prefer routes that require less turns, over separated bicycle paths, smoother street surface materials like asphalt or concrete. Furthermore, dense and mixed-use neighbourhoods seem to attract more active travel. This research will analyse correlations between spatial characteristics and cycling route choices in Amsterdam. Space Syntax is an analysis method that studies the urban morphology of a city. Until recently, the implementation of Space Syntax has mainly focused on the analysis of pedestrian flows, with a limited number of studies applying the methodology to cyclist behaviour. This master thesis presents exploratory research into the application of Space Syntax – in combination with other built environment characteristics – to study cyclist route choice. GPS data from the 2016 Bicycle Counting Week shows the cycling counts of every street segment. A linear regression analysis found that “through-movement potential” represented by Normalised Angular Choice (NACH) explained more than 22% of variance in cycling activity. The results indicate that Space Syntax is an interesting indicator to locate which street segments could potentially see large numbers of cyclists. More research encompassing multiple cities in a variety of different contexts is recommended, as Amsterdam is a city with a rich cycling culture that spans multiple decades, making it difficult to generalize any conclusions.

Predicting crowd movements in real-time during mass events has been shown to be a complex yet valuable task in order to reduce the risk of overcrowding. The aim of this research is to propose and validate a crowd movement forecasting method for which simulation is performed offline (i.e. prior to the event) but the forecast is done online, in real-time. A number of scenarios is formulated and simulated creating what is called a database of scenarios. In real-time, based on information from the event's crowd monitoring systems, a scenario from this database is then selected which corresponds to the prediction. The research is focused on addressing the concepts related to the two pillars of the method: the formulation of the scenarios to be included in the database, and the operationalization of the system to select a scenario in real-time.

At mass events, pedestrians can experience the level of crowdedness as unsafe, unpleasant and stressful. To gain a better understanding of perceived crowdedness, the effects of personal, trip and event characteristics at an event are researched. Data collection was performed by a simultaneous survey and monitoring study at the TT Festival in Assen and at the Red light district in Amsterdam. A SEM model shows that perceived crowdedness is influenced by mainly by the density, quantified using Wi-Fi sensor data. Besides that, trip purpose and familiarity with the event influence perceived crowdedness as well. Furthermore, this research shows that perception of safety, comfort, atmosphere and attractiveness of the environment are also related to the perception of crowdedness.

Crowd management is a crucial element in keeping situations safe. Models can help understand in-event crowd management system more thoroughly, and illustrate potential effects of measures before they have to be implemented in real life. However, applications of crowd models for operational support on in-event crowd management are sparse. Two main reasons are the cause of this: (1) inherent uncertainty regarding crowd modelling; and (2) computational requirements regarding large-scale applications. This research proposed three methodological steps for model-based experimentation—exploration, selection, and evaluation—to overcome current challenges in the application of crowd models. These steps were then applied on a case study of operational in-event crowd management at the Grote Markt, in the city of Breda. The research question thereby was: “What effect do the in-event crowd management measures—traffic regulators, directional guidance, and object placement—have on the density and walking speed of pedestrians in the Grote Markt, Breda?”. To answers this question, this study: (1) constructed a detailed microscopic crowd model of the Grote Markt, utilizing open-source crowd simulation framework Vadere for rapid, yet sophisticated, development of an agent-based model; and (2) applied this model according to the proposed steps for model-based experimentation, using techniques from the field of exploratory modelling and analysis. A connector between Vadere and the Python based Exploratory Modelling and Analysis (EMA) Workbench was constructed to synergize these two steps. Main findings highlight the potential of the proposed traffic regulator measure, and its effectiveness compared to object placement and directional guidance. With the proposal of the methodological steps, this work provides the needed stepping stone for operational support on crowd management. One that utilizes crowd models to understand in-event crowd management systems, and thereby enables the comparison between different in-event measures before they have to be implemented in real life.