An all-densities pedestrian simulator based on a dynamic evaluation of the interpersonal distances

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel agent-based pedestrian simulation model that evaluates interpersonal distances without relying on a spatial field, effectively capturing crowd behaviors including congestion and pushing in emergency scenarios.

Contribution

The model's key innovation is its reliance solely on interpersonal distance evaluation for pedestrian behavior, avoiding traditional field-based assumptions, and accurately reproducing complex crowd dynamics.

Findings

Reproduces concave/convex fundamental diagrams with a double hump.

Effectively models pushing behavior at high densities.

Aligns with ISO 20414 standards in numerical tests.

Abstract

In this paper we deal with pedestrian modeling, aiming at simulating crowd behavior in normal and emergency scenarios, including highly congested mass events. We are specifically concerned with a new agent-based, continuous-in-space, discrete-in-time, nondifferential model, where pedestrians have finite size and are compressible to a certain extent. The model also takes into account the pushing behavior appearing at extreme high densities. The main novelty is that pedestrians are not assumed to generate any kind of "field" in the space around which determines the behavior of the crowd. Instead, the behavior of each pedestrian solely relies on its knowledge of the environment and the evaluation of interpersonal distances between it and the others. The model is able to reproduce the concave/concave fundamental diagram with a "double hump" (i.e. with a second peak) which shows up when body forces come into play. We present several numerical tests (some of them being inspired by the recent ISO 20414 standard), which show how the model can reproduce classical self-organizing patterns.