A modified heuristics-based model for simulating realistic pedestrian movement behavior

Abstract

Pedestrian movement simulation models are used for various purposes, such as building evacuation, transportation engineering, safety management of large events. It also provides effective means to uncover underlying mechanisms of collective behaviors. This paper presents a modified heuristics-based model in which potential collisions are explicitly considered during the moving process. Meanwhile, a series of simulations were conducted in two typical scenarios to demonstrate the influence of critical parameters on model performance. We found that when facing a wide obstacle in a corridor, the larger the visual radius, the earlier the pedestrian starts to make a detour. In addition, when a pedestrian observes a large crowd walking towards him, he chooses to make a detour and move in the flow in a uniform direction. Furthermore, the model can reproduce lane formation pedestrian flow phenomena in relatively high-density situations. With the increase of pedestrian visual radius and the weight of potential collision resistance, more stable pedestrian lanes and less moving-through-the-counterflow pedestrians can be observed. In terms of model validation, the density-speed relationship of simulation results agrees well with that of the published empirical data. Our results demonstrate that the modified heuristics-based model has overcome the deficiency of the original model, which is capable of reproducing more realistic pedestrian movement behavior.