Experimental study on the elderly pedestrians passing through bottlenecks

TL;DR

This study experimentally investigates elderly pedestrians' movement through bottlenecks, revealing density, flow, and behavior differences compared to younger pedestrians, with implications for evacuation and facility design.

Contribution

It provides new empirical data on elderly pedestrian dynamics through bottlenecks, highlighting differences from younger pedestrians and informing safety and design strategies.

Findings

Elderly pedestrians exhibit similar self-organized phenomena as young.

Maximum local density exceeds 4 m-2 in front of exits.

Flow is linearly related to bottleneck width but lower than that of young pedestrians.

Abstract

The aging of population is a social phenomenon in the world. In this study, series of controlled experiments were performed to investigate the movement characteristics of elderly pedestrians passing through bottlenecks. Similar self-organized phenomena to that of the young like 'zipper effect' and 'lane formation' are observed. The highest local density that appears in front of the exit in the experiment is beyond 4 m-2. The time lapse between two consecutive pedestrians of the elderly is about 0.2 s longer than that of the young when the width is 0.5 m and 0.7 m. Besides, the difference decreases with the increasing exit width. A linear relation between flow and bottleneck width is obtained, while the flow of elders is lower than that of the young under the same width of exits. The waiting time of pedestrians can be divided into two stages when the bottleneck width is narrower than 0.8 m. The findings in this study will benefit the evacuation guidance as well as the facility design for elders.