Book/Dissertation / PhD Thesis

FZJ-2021-03479

http://join2-wiki.gsi.de/foswiki/pub/Main/Artwork/join2_logo100x88.png The Influence of Individual Characteristics on Crowd Dynamics

Geoerg, P. (Corresponding author)FZJ*

2021
Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH Zentralbibliothek, Verlag Jülich
ISBN: 978-3-95806-561-1

Please use a persistent id in citations: http://hdl.handle.net/2128/28641

Abstract: Adequately dimensioned egress routes are important for designing safe buildings. However,their capacity analysis is usually based on studies under controlled conditions with populations defined by homogeneous movement characteristics. As a consequence, the nowadays increasing proportions of older people or persons with disabilities are not taken into account in these studies. As a result, these groups are not considered in functional relationships of pedestrian movement and therefore an issue for crowd dynamics analysis. Thus, there is a need to provide valid engineering egress data considering heterogeneous crowds, i.e. with older people and persons with disabilities. In this sense, this doctoral thesis introduces empirical insights into movement characteristics of crowds with different conditions of heterogeneity to estimate the influence of individual movement characteristics on key performance values, e.g. like speeds or flow rates. Therefore a series of studies were conducted in corridor and bottleneck situations with about 10% of participants with various disabilities and different assistive devices. These studies comprised ten to 80 participants and focused on the analysis of unimpeded speed, the individual time gap and the specific flow concept as well as the speed-density-relations and flow-density-relations. First, the unimpeded speed in the horizontal motion and its dependency on individual characteristics was determined. Second, an influence on gaps between participants and effects on the specific flow in different conditions of crowd heterogeneity was assessed. Third, empirical speed-density- and flow-density-relations were analysed to perform a capacity analysis. As a result, the diversity of individual characteristics strongly affected the local stationarity of the measures of individual velocity, density and flow rate, the dependency between density and movement speed or flow as well as increased the rate of interpersonal interactions. To integrate these results into egress calculation methods, a new analysis concept was established. Its four steps are: first, the consideration of an extended range of individual preparation times to start egress activities; second, an extended variation in distributed individual speeds; third, an adoption of empirical relations and fourth, an estimation of the flow rate based on scattered individual time gaps. Thus, this proposed concept allows the consideration of individual, heterogeneous abilities for participation in egress calculation methods.

Note: Universität Wuppertal, Diss., 2021

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Contributing Institute(s):

1. Zivile Sicherheitsforschung (IAS-7)

Research Program(s):

1. 5111 - Domain-Specific Simulation & Data Life Cycle Labs (SDLs) and Research Groups (POF4-511) (POF4-511)

Appears in the scientific report 2021

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Database coverage:
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