This article is on collective phenomena in pedestrian dynamics during the assembling and dispersal of gatherings. To date pedestrian dynamics have been primarily studied in the natural and engineering sciences. Pedestrians are analyzed and modeled as driven particles revealing self-organizing phenomena and complex transport characteristics. However, pedestrians in crowds also behave as living beings according to stimulus-response mechanisms or act as human subjects on the basis of social norms, social identities or strategies. To show where pedestrian dynamics need social psychology in addition to the natural sciences we propose the application of three categories–phenomena, behavior and action. They permit a clear discrimination between situations in which minimal models from the natural sciences are appropriate and those in which sociological and psychological concepts are needed. To demonstrate the necessity of this framework, an experiment in which a large group of people (n = 270) enters a concert hall through two different spatial barrier structures is analyzed. These two structures correspond to everyday situations such as boarding trains and access to immigration desks. Methods from the natural and social sciences are applied. Firstly, physical measurements show the influence of the spatial structure on the dynamics of the entrance procedure. Density, waiting time and speed of progress show large variations. Secondly, a questionnaire study (n = 60) reveals how people perceive and evaluate these entrance situations. Markedly different expectations, social norms and strategies are associated with the two spatial structures. The results from the questionnaire study do not always conform to objective physical measures, indicating the limitations of models which are based on objective physical measures alone and which neglect subjective perspectives.

Emergency exits as bottlenecks in escape routes are important for designing traffic facilities. Particularly, the capacity estimation is a crucial performance criterion for assessment of pedestrians’ safety in built environments. For this reason, several studies were performed during the last decades which focus on the quantification of movement through corridors and bottlenecks. These studies were usually conducted with populations of homogeneous characteristics to reduce influencing variables and for reasons of practicability. Studies which consider heterogeneous characteristics in performance parameters are rarely available. In response and to reduce this lack of data a series of well-controlled large-scale movement studies considering pedestrians using different types of wheelchairs was carried out. As a result it is shown that the empirical relations ρ¯(v¯) and Js¯(ρ¯) are strongly affected by the presence of participants with visible disabilities (such as wheelchair users). We observed an adaption of the overall movement speeds to the movement speeds of participants using a wheelchair, even for low densities and free flow scenarios. Flow and movement speed are in a complex relation and do not depend on density only. In our studies, the concept of specific flow fits for the nondisabled subpopulation but it is not valid for scenario considering wheelchair users in the population.

Understanding movement in heterogeneous groups is important for a meaningful evaluation of evacuation prediction and for a proper design of buildings. The understanding of interactions and influencing factors in heterogeneous groups on key performance figures is fundamental for a safe design. This contribution presents results of experimental studies on movement of a crowd through a bottleneck involving participants with and without disabilities. High precise trajectories of the attendees extracted from video recordings were used to calculate density and velocity of the participants. Besides the well-established fundamental diagram new insights into the individual relation between density and velocity are discussed. A complex structure and considerate behaviour in movement implicates a strong influence of the heterogeneity on key performance values of safe movement.

Summary The importance of empirical relations to quantify the movement of pedestrians through a facility has increased during the last decades since performance‐based design methods became more common. Bottlenecks are of special interest because of their importance for egress routes and as they result in a reduced capacity. The empirical relations as the density‐dependent movement speed or flow rate were derived by studies under laboratory conditions, which were usually conducted with populations of homogeneous characteristics for better control of influencing variables. If individual characteristics of a crowd become more heterogeneous, individuals were forced to adapt their individual movement and control individual manoeuvring. These unintended interactions lead to a different shape of the fundamental empirical relations. Here, we present results from a movement study under well‐controlled boundary conditions in which participants with and without different characteristics of disabilities participated. To consider the effect of different heterogeneities on the capacity of a facility, fundamental diagrams are generated using the Voronoi method. If participants with visible disabilities (such as using assistive devices) are part of a crowd, significant differences relating to the shape of the empirical relations and the capacities are found. This indicates that the heterogeneity of a population leads to an increased interpersonal interaction which results in influenced movement characteristics.

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