Investigating the effect of social groups in uni-directional pedestrian flow

TL;DR

This study uses a discrete simulation model to analyze how social groups, specifically dyads, influence pedestrian flow in corridors and room egress, revealing that dyads tend to slow down movement and reduce flow rates.

Contribution

The paper introduces an adaptive discrete model to simulate the impact of dyads on uni-directional pedestrian flow, providing new insights into their negative effects on flow efficiency.

Findings

Dyads reduce pedestrian velocity at medium-high densities.

Dyads lower flow rates during egress from rooms.

Ignoring dyads overestimates pedestrian flow in models.

Abstract

The influence of cohesion among members of dyads is investigated in scenarios characterized by uni-directional flow by means of a discrete model: a corridor and the egress from a room with a bottleneck of varying width are simulated. The model manages the dynamics of simulated group members with an adaptive mechanism, balancing the probability of movement according to the dispersion of the group; the cohesion mechanism is calibrated through the parameters $\kappa_c$ and $\delta$. All scenarios are simulated with two procedures: (Proc. 1) population composed of individual pedestrians, in order to validate the simulation model and to provide baseline data; (Proc. 2) population including dyads (50% of the simulated pedestrians), in order to verify their impact. In the corridor scenario, the presence of dyads causes a reduction of the velocities and specific flow at medium-high densities. Egress from a square room with a unique central exit produces results in line with recent studies in the literature, but also shows that the dyads negatively affect the dynamics, leading generally to a slower walking speed and a lower pedestrian flow. Ignoring the presence of dyads would lead to an overestimation of egress flows.