Adaptive pedestrian behaviour for the preservation of group cohesion

Abstract

Purpose: A crowd of pedestrians is a complex system in which individuals exhibit conflicting behavioural mechanisms leading to self-organisation phenomena. Computer models for the simulation of crowds represent a consolidated type of application, employed on a day-to-day basis to support designers and decision makers. Most state of the art models, however, generally do not consider the explicit representation of pedestrians aggregations (groups) and their implications on the overall system dynamics. This work is aimed at discussing a research effort systematically exploring the potential implication of the presence of groups of pedestrians in different situations (e.g. changing density, spatial configurations of the environment). Methods: The paper describes an agent-based model encompassing both traditional individual motivations (i.e. tendency to stay away from other pedestrians while moving towards the goal) and an adaptive mechanism representing the influence of group presence in the simulated population. The mechanism is designed to preserve the cohesion of specific types of groups (e.g. families and friends) even in high density and turbulent situations. The model is tested in simplified scenarios to evaluate the implications of modelling choices and the presence of groups. Results: The model produces results in tune with available evidences from the literature, both from the perspective of pedestrian flows and space utilisation, in scenarios not comprising groups; when groups are present, the model is able to preserve their cohesion even in challenging situations (i.e. high density, presence of a counterflow), and it produces interesting results in high density situations that call for further observations and experiments to gather empirical data. Conclusions: The introduced adaptive model for group cohesion is effective in qualitatively reproducing group related phenomena and it stimulates further research efforts aimed at gathering empirical evidences, on one hand, and modelling efforts aimed at reproducing additional related phenomena (e.g. leader-follower movement patterns).

Age and Group-driven Pedestrian Behaviour: from Observations to Simulations

“…3, with emphasis on data analysis and results about trajectories, speed and group proxemic behaviour. The paper concludes with remarks about results and their use for the validation of the simulation system ELIAS38 [4,5], with reference to the representation of different granulometric distributions of groups, heterogeneous speed profiles and group cohesion mechanism (Sec. 4).…”

A Hybridized Approach to Validation: The Role of Sociological Research Methods in Pedestrian Modeling

“…Unlike the work of (Vizzari et al (2013)), the model does not measure group cohesion from the center of the group, but rather on an artificially assigned "group leader" to whom members gravitate. This simplistic interpretation of group cohesion serves the purpose of allowing individuals to walk in varying degrees of independence from the group while providing a connection between them.…”

Cellular automaton model of crowd evacuation inspired by slime mould

“…Macroscopic models focus on the total number of the members of the crowd, trying to study the major characteristics of individuals' flow rather than the features of the individuals themselves. On the other hand, microscopic models While particle-and CA-based approaches mostly aim at generating quantitative results about pedestrian and crowd movement, agent-based models sometimes aim at the generation of effective visualizations of believable pedestrian dynamics, and therefore, the above approaches do not necessarily share the same notion of realism and validation (Vizzari, Manenti, and Crociani 2013). Works like (Bandini, Manzoni, and Vizzari 2004;Henein and White 2005) separate the pedestrians from the environment and grant them with a complex behavioural specification.…”