Crowds in front of bottlenecks at entrances from the perspective of physics and social psychology

Abstract

This article presents an interdisciplinary study of physical and social psychological effects on crowd dynamics based on a series of bottleneck experiments. Bottlenecks are of particular interest for applications such as crowd management and design of emergency routes because they limit the performance of a facility. In addition to previous work on the dynamics within the bottleneck, this study focuses on the dynamics in front of the bottleneck, more specifically, at entrances. The experimental set-up simulates an entrance scenario to a concert consisting of an entrance gate (serving as bottleneck) and a corridor formed by barriers. The parameters examined are the corridor width, degree of motivation and priming of the social norm of queuing. The analysis is based on head trajectories and questionnaires. We show that the density of persons per square metre depends on motivation and also increases continuously with increasing corridor width, meaning that a density reduction can be achieved by a reduction of space. In comparison to other corridor widths observed, the narrowest corridor is rated as being fairer, more comfortable and as showing less unfair behaviour. Pushing behaviour is seen as ambivalent: it is rated as unfair and listed as a strategy for faster access.

Systematic experimental investigation of the obstacle effect during non-competitive and extremely competitive evacuations

“…8 and relative to a low and an high competitiveness evacuations, it can be seen that the density of the crowd shows a very different shape: a sort of “V” profile for low competitiveness and a more flat distribution in the competitive case. Although in non-competitive conditions the shape of the density distribution depends on the way people choose to line up 44 and the specific geometry of the room 45 , in the competitive case we may assume it will be the flatter the more people push toward the exit. Thus, the angle formed by the density profile at the exit could allow estimating the pressure inside the crowd.…”

Numerical Study of Bottleneck Flow with Varying Corridor Width and Motivation Using a Speed-Based Model

“…Bottleneck flow is one of the central problems in pedestrian dynamics and has been studied extensively both experimentally [6,[14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25] and theoretically [13,[26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34]. Here an important factor is the motivation of the individuals to reach their target.…”

A Hybrid Tracking System of Full-Body Motion Inside Crowds

“…Such experiments allow the collection of exact positions and additional characteristics for each participant, such as age, gender, size, fitness and cultural origin. Furthermore, controlled experiments enable the measurements of quantities, giving conclusions on psychological aspects [ 5 , 6 ] that are impossible to survey by pure observation.…”