The fundamental diagram of pedestrian movement revisited

Abstract

The empirical relation between density and velocity of pedestrian movement is not completely analyzed, particularly with regard to the 'microscopic' causes which determine the relation at medium and high densities. The simplest system for the investigation of this dependency is the normal movement of pedestrians along a line (single-file movement). This article presents experimental results for this system under laboratory conditions and discusses the following observations: The data show a linear relation between the velocity and the inverse of the density, which can be regarded as the required length of one pedestrian to move. Furthermore we compare the results for the single-file movement with literature data for the movement in a plane. This comparison shows an unexpected conformance between the fundamental diagrams, indicating that lateral interference has negligible influence on the velocity-density relation at the density domain 1 m −2 < ρ < 5 m −2 . In addition we test a procedure for automatic recording of pedestrian flow characteristics. We present preliminary results on measurement range and accuracy of this method.

Equivalent Spectral Model for Pedestrian-Induced Forces on Footbridges: A Generalized Formulation

“…When pedestrian density reaches values high enough, pedestrian traffic cannot be considered as unrestricted because pedestrians are inclined to synchronize their step length [12]. Furthermore, the harmonic content of the pedestrian-induced force may change because of the variation of both step frequency and velocity with pedestrian density ([10]- [15]).…”

“…interpedestrians relations) hidden behind the Kladek formula has been provided by [12]. The authors focused their attention on the changing in slope of the fundamental density -velocity law, and they identified different density domains in which the fundamental law can be considered about linear.…”

“…The authors focused their attention on the changing in slope of the fundamental density -velocity law, and they identified different density domains in which the fundamental law can be considered about linear. The authors imputed these differences as a consequence of different effects due to microscopic characteristics of pedestrian traffic [12]. To support this claim, they performed an experimental campaign, in which flow characteristics were measured using both manual and automatic video procedures.…”

“…Starting from experimental results available in [12] and [15], Venuti et al [11] proposed an interpretative model for the fundamental pedestrian diagram. The authors focused their attention on the Pedestrian Area Module (PAM), i.e.…”

“…The walking velocity monotonically decreases with growing density ( [10]- [14]); furthermore, when pedestrian density is high enough, pedestrians are inclined to walk with the same step length [12]. Since walking velocity is directly proportional to step frequency and step length [15] , the increase in pedestrian density produces a shift of the harmonic content of pedestrian-induced load towards lower values of frequency.…”