Thesis (M.C.E.)--University of Delaware, 2009. / Principal faculty advisor: Earl E. Lee, II, Dept. of Civil & Environmental Engineering. Includes bibliographical references.

This dissertation reported on the findings of the characteristics of the pedestrian flows in Chinese New Year Eve Fair in Hong Kong and, the recommendations to its crowd control measures. Since most of the pedestrian flow models were developed for general purposes under normal condition, special models developed specifically for major events such as bazaars, fairs and festivals in Hong Kong were required to understand their pedestrian flow patterns. In this dissertation, pedestrian flows in the Fair were videotaped and data was extracted for calibrating several pedestrian flow models. These included the conventional models developed by Greenshields, Greenberg, Pipes-Munjal, Underwood, Drake, Wong et al. and four modifications of these models for simulating isotropic and bi-directional pedestrian flow scenarios. The free flow speed of the pedestrians in the Chinese New Year Eve Fair was found to be around 0.69-0.84 m/s, slower than those identified in other researches. Besides, the results of these models showed the relationships between walking speed, density and flow of the pedestrians in the Fair. Also, the effects of bi-directional flow to pedestrian flows were assessed and quantified. These findings obtained from models were then used as a basis for formulating crowd control strategy of major events in Hong Kong. / published_or_final_version / Transport Policy and Planning / Master / Master of Arts in Transport Policy and Planning

Walking is an environmentally friendly mode of transportation. A better understanding of pedestrian activities and effective planning of walking facilities are particularly important for densely populated Asian cities like Hong Kong. Empirical studies on pedestrian flows can be classified as controlled experiments and observational surveys. Controlled experiments are flexible and can be designed to fulfill the requirements of specific studies and eliminate influence from unrelated factors. Observational surveys provide data for pedestrian movements in different types of walking facilities. This thesis aims to develop a mathematical model for multidirectional pedestrian flows based on knowledge obtained from both a controlled experiment and observational surveys on three different walking facilities. Bayesian inference is adopted for model calibration, as it can combine the prior information from the controlled experiment and the observed data from the observational surveys. The proposed model is based on Drake’s (1967) model of traffic flow. However, multidirectional pedestrian flows are much more complicated than the unidirectional and bidirectional flows. Therefore, instead of relating the speed of a pedestrian stream solely to pedestrian density, the flow ratio and intersecting angles between streams are introduced as factors that may influence stream speed. The proposed model takes the form of a set of structural equations rather than a single deterministic function. By applying Bayesian inference, the proposed model is calibrated with the three sets of observed data respectively, based on the prior distribution specified by the controlled experiment results. Finally, pedestrian movements in three different walking facilities are analyzed based on the properties of the calibrated model. / published_or_final_version / Civil Engineering / Master / Master of Philosophy

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Delaware, 2008. / Principal faculty advisor: Ardeshir Faghri, Dept. of Civil & Environmental Engineering. Includes bibliographical references.

The current state of pedestrian traffic monitoring is characterized by short-duration counts over inconsistent time intervals, making it difficult to compare data temporally at a location or spatially between different locations. Practitioners require understanding of hourly pedestrian traffic periodicities in order to maximize the utility of their short-duration counts. This research deployed six automated pedestrian counters at 12 study sites representing six roadway segments in Winnipeg’s commercial zones. Pedestrian traffic data was collected in 2012 over the summer and fall seasons. This research analyzes the influence of temporal and spatial factors on hourly pedestrian traffic periodicities to enable the characterization of hourly pedestrian traffic in commercial zones. Results indicate that short-duration counts be collected from Tuesday to Thursday on days with less than four hourly precipitation events. Additionally, pedestrian traffic varies seasonally and between adjacent sidewalks in commercial zones. Finally, characterization of pedestrian traffic pattern groups requires detailed land-use data. / October 2015

Planners and decision-makers recognize that non-motorized transportation provides environmental, economic, and public health benefits. Recent technology advances, such as the widespread use of mobile devices and geographic information systems, enable the collection of disaggregate built environment and travel behavior data. To integrate pedestrian planning into transport operations at local and regional scales, it is necessary to develop systems to rank and prioritize zones and corridors for pedestrian infrastructure investment. Best practices for pedestrian planning suggest that jurisdictions prioritize pedestrian projects based on a variety of concerns, such as high pedestrian activity, pedestrian safety, accessibility to transit and mobility for persons with disabilities, children and older adults. Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology developed and piloted an automated system to assess the quality of sidewalks, utilizing an Android™ App that collects GPS-enabled video, accelerometer, and gyroscope data. Researchers collected pilot sidewalk data within the City of Atlanta to evaluate the accessibility and walkability of pedestrian facilities. This research proposes a weighted ranking system to prioritize pedestrian projects using App-collected pedestrian facility data collected in the field using a mobile Android application, pedestrian safety indicators, pedestrian activity data and demographic data. The ranking system uses a set of block-level pedestrian potential and deficiency indicators to prioritize planning investments within a subarea of Midtown, Atlanta, Georgia, combining available data sources with app-collected sidewalk width data. The results of these rank-order prioritization analyses indicate that blocks near rail stations and Georgia Institute of Technology/Technology Square should be prioritized for pedestrian investments. However, further refinements are needed to extend the application of this methodology to larger geographic scales. Additionally, this research did not consider the cost constraints of pedestrian project alternatives within the study area. Future availability of comprehensive pedestrian activity and pedestrian network data will enable planners and engineers to prioritize corridors and intersections for pedestrian project implementation.

In order to attract pedestrians to travel with public transport instead of private cars, the layout of interchange stations is important and should be designed in an effective way. Microscopic simulation of pedestrians can be used to evaluate different layout scenarios or a future increase in flow. The simulation software Viswalk was investigated, where the movements of pedestrians are based on a social force model,. The purpose of this thesis was to investigate simulated walking speeds for different flow levels and to investigate the effects of dividing pedestrians into types with different desired speeds. The aim was to find a desired speed distribution that can be used for different flow levels. Field studies have been performed to collect pedestrian traffic data with a video camera at Stockholm Central Station. Two disjoint flow levels were identified and used to investigate if the same desired speed distribution could be used for different flow levels. The average observed walking speed was 1.33 metres per second at the low flow level and 1.25 metres per second at the high flow level. The error was 4.5 percent between the average observed walking speed and the average simulated walking speed when the optimal desired speed distribution at the low flow level was used at the high flow level. Effects of using different desired speed distributions for different pedestrian types have also been investigated. The error between the average of the observed and the simulated walking speeds varies between 2.3 and 4.1 percent when dividing pedestrians into different types when the optimal desired speed distributions at the low flow level are used at the high flow level. A sensitivity analysis of some parameters of the social force model in Viswalk has also been performed. Several adjustments of the parameters show that some parameters had great impact of the simulated walking speeds. The final conclusion is that the parameter configuration and how the pedestrians are divided into different types affect the average simulated walking speed.

Dans cette thèse on étudie certaines applications de modèles simples de la physique théorique au trafic piétonnier. Ces modèles sont tous des automates cellulaires, plus précisément des processus d'exclusion. Dans la première partie de le thèse on étudie un système unidimensionnel, le processus d'exclusion simple totalement symétrique (TASEP), un modèle paradigmatique de particules qui sautent dans une direction favorisée sur un réseau. Le TASEP peut être utilisé pour modéliser de nombreux phénomènes de transport, et ici on l'étudie avec des schémas de mise à jour adaptés aux piétons. Le “frozen shuffle update”, schéma plutôt régulier, est défini et ses propriétés principales sont déterminées exactement sur un anneau, avec conditions aux bords ouvertes et pour deux voies qui se croisent en un seul site. Une théorie du domain wall (mur séparant des domaines) exacte au niveau microscopique est alors construite pour un TASEP avec mise a jour parallèle. On montre que cette dernière est en désaccord avec les prédictions précédentes et que la différence vient de corrélations à courte portée qui sont habituellement négligées pour les schémas de mise à jour présentant des fluctuations plus importantes. Dans la seconde partie on combine plusieurs TASEP afin de former un croisement à deux dimensions comprenant deux flux de particules qui s'intersectent perpendiculairement. Sur un tore on observe une alternance de diagonales de particules de chaque type qu'on voit aussi chez les vrais piétons. Cette structure est alors expliquée par une analyse de stabilité linéaire d'équations type champ moyen. Avec des conditions aux bords ouvertes les diagonales s'inclinent légèrement, donnant naissance à “l'effet chevron”, qu'on observe aussi bien pour les particules que pour les équations. L'effet chevron est fondamentalement nonlinéaire, mais peut tout de même être expliqué par des calculs d'interactions effectives entre les particules, de manière similaire à ce qui est fait en mécanique des fluides. Pour finir, quelques généralisations naturelles sont rapidement étudiées numériquement pour tester l'applicabilité du modèle aux piétons et la possibilité de mesurer l'effet chevron dans des expériences. / In this thesis we study pedestrian traffic applications of simple models from theoretical physics. These models all belong to the realm of cellular automata, more precisely they are exclusion processes. In the first part of the thesis we study the one-dimensional Totally Asymmetric Simple Exclusion Process (TASEP), a paradigmatic model of particles hopping in a preferred direction in a one-dimensional lattice. While the TASEP can be used to model various transport phenomena, in this thesis we study the TASEP with updating schemes adapted to pedestrians. The rather regular 'frozen shuffle update' is introduced and its main properties are determined exactly on a ring, with open boundaries and for a crossing of two lanes on a single site. A microscopically exact domain wall theory is then constructed for the TASEP with parallel update and shown to disagree with already existing predictions, the discrepancy being shown to come from short-range correlations that are usually ignored for updates with more fluctuations. In the second part several TASEP are combined to form a bidimensional crossing with two perpendicularly intersecting particle fluxes. On a torus we observe a pattern of alternating diagonals of different particle types, that is observed in real pedestrian crossings as well. The pattern is then explained by a linear stability analysis of mean-field-type equations. Taking open boundary conditions the diagonals become tilted and give rise to what is called the 'chevron effect', observed in the particle system as well as in the numerical solution of the equations. This chevron effect is fundamentally nonlinear, but can nevertheless be explained in terms of fluid-mechanics-like effective interactions between particles. Eventually, some natural generalizations are briefly studied numerically to question the applicability of the model to pedestrians and the possibility of measuring the chevron effect in experiments.

O objetivo desta pesquisa é investigar como o fluxo de pedestres interfere na concepção arquitetônica dos espaços que envolvem multidões. Tendo como objeto inicial as estações metroferroviárias, realizou-se um abrangente levantamento bibliográfico sobre o tema, buscando abordá-lo na complexidade que envolve o comportamento humano, a engenharia, a arquitetura e a construção. Conceitos sobre modelagem e simulação de fluxos de pedestres são apresentados e servem de base para o desenvolvimento de um estudo de caso sobre a concepção de distintos espaços arquitetônicos: O Estádio Arena das Dunas, em Natal; o Estádio Mineirão, em Belo Horizonte; o Parque Olímpico, no Rio de Janeiro; e a interligação metroviária Paulista-Consolação, em São Paulo. A presente pesquisa não tem a pretensão de apresentar soluções ou diretrizes de projeto para espaços que envolvem multidões, mas busca investigar como a concepção desses espaços pode ser alterada a partir de uma abordagem que coloca os pedestres como elemento determinante da arquitetura. / This essay aims at investigating how the pedestrian flow interferes the architectural design of the places full of people. Regarding the subway and rail stations as the initial objective, it was made a comprehensive bibliographic survey about this subject in order to speaking about the human behavior engineering, architecture and construction complexity. It is presented the modeling and simulation concepts of pedestrian flows which function as the basis for the development of a case study of different architectural spaces design: the Arena das Dunas Stadium in Natal, the Mineirão Stadium in Belo Horizonte, the Olympics Park in Rio de Janeiro and the subway stations interconnection Consolação-Paulista in São Paulo. This essay does not intend to present solutions or design guide lines for places full of people, but investigate how the design of these places can be changed from an approach that is considering the pedestrians as a determinant element of the architecture.

O objetivo desta pesquisa é investigar como o fluxo de pedestres interfere na concepção arquitetônica dos espaços que envolvem multidões. Tendo como objeto inicial as estações metroferroviárias, realizou-se um abrangente levantamento bibliográfico sobre o tema, buscando abordá-lo na complexidade que envolve o comportamento humano, a engenharia, a arquitetura e a construção. Conceitos sobre modelagem e simulação de fluxos de pedestres são apresentados e servem de base para o desenvolvimento de um estudo de caso sobre a concepção de distintos espaços arquitetônicos: O Estádio Arena das Dunas, em Natal; o Estádio Mineirão, em Belo Horizonte; o Parque Olímpico, no Rio de Janeiro; e a interligação metroviária Paulista-Consolação, em São Paulo. A presente pesquisa não tem a pretensão de apresentar soluções ou diretrizes de projeto para espaços que envolvem multidões, mas busca investigar como a concepção desses espaços pode ser alterada a partir de uma abordagem que coloca os pedestres como elemento determinante da arquitetura. / This essay aims at investigating how the pedestrian flow interferes the architectural design of the places full of people. Regarding the subway and rail stations as the initial objective, it was made a comprehensive bibliographic survey about this subject in order to speaking about the human behavior engineering, architecture and construction complexity. It is presented the modeling and simulation concepts of pedestrian flows which function as the basis for the development of a case study of different architectural spaces design: the Arena das Dunas Stadium in Natal, the Mineirão Stadium in Belo Horizonte, the Olympics Park in Rio de Janeiro and the subway stations interconnection Consolação-Paulista in São Paulo. This essay does not intend to present solutions or design guide lines for places full of people, but investigate how the design of these places can be changed from an approach that is considering the pedestrians as a determinant element of the architecture.