Pedestrian Traffic Characterization Based on Pedestrian Response

There are significant differences in pedestrian behavior between normal and emergency conditions. Further, this behavior varies with age. Therefore, in this paper, pedestrian behavior is studied during normal and emergency evacuation of two groups of students from classrooms. One group consists of grade nine high school students while the other includes diploma (college) students. The evacuation time, number of steps, step frequency, and velocity are observed. It is found that the number of steps, step frequency, and velocity are larger during an emergency evacuation. Further, pedestrian response to forward conditions is based on the step size and velocity. These results are used to develop a macroscopic pedestrian response model. The performance of this model and the Lighthill, Whitham, and Richards (LWR) model for pedestrian traffic is compared using the First Order Centered (FORCE) scheme. Pedestrian parameters from the experiments are used for model evaluation. The direction of pedestrian movement is changed multiple times to observe pedestrian alignment behavior. The results obtained show that pedestrians follow changes in direction and align to forward conditions. The behavior with the LWR model is uniform for all changes in direction and alignment is instantaneous, which is impossible. Conversely, pedestrian behavior with the proposed model is realistic.