SUMMARYGaining insights into pedestrian flow operations and assessment tools for pedestrian walking speeds and comfort is important in, for instance, planning and geometric design of infrastructural facilities, as well as for management of pedestrian flows under regular and safety-critical circumstances. Pedestrian flow operations are complex, and vehicular flow simulation modelling approaches are generally not applicable to pedestrian flow modelling. This article focusses on pedestrian walking behaviour theory and modelling. It is assumed that pedestrians are autonomous predictive controllers that minimize the subjective predicted cost of walking. Pedestrians predict the behaviour of other pedestrians based on their observations of the current state as well as predictions of the future state, given the assumed walking strategy of other pedestrians in their direct neighbourhood. As such, walking can be represented by a (non-co-operative or co-operative) differential game, where pedestrians may or may not be aware of the walking strategy of the other pedestrians. Copyright # 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.KEY WORDS: walker model; differential games; feedback control; micro-simulation
BACKGROUNDResearch of pedestrian behaviour started in the 1960s, when pedestrian flows in urban areas were studied. The main purpose of these early investigations was to provide guidelines for optimal design of walkway infrastructure. Weidmann [1] presents a concise overview of empirical facts about pedestrian walking behaviour, concerning among other things the relation between walking speed and energy consumption, the factors influencing walking speeds, and the use of space by pedestrians. In his review, Weidmann shows that pedestrian walking speeds are dependent on personal characteristics of pedestrians (age, gender, size, health, etc.), characteristics of the trip (walking purpose, route familiarity, luggage, trip length), properties of the infrastructure (type, grade, attractiveness of environment, shelter), and finally