Quantifying and validating measures of airport terminal wayfinding

The paper is concerned with passenger orientation, commonly called wayfinding, in airport terminals. Previous work has built on theoretical models of connectivity to quantify visual connections. The paper incorporates empirical findings of the effects of the number of decision points and level changes on the ease of wayfinding into a new model of the visibility index that is compared with an existing model. The level of service for wayfinding as experienced by users is examined using questionnaires. Comparisons of measured and reported ease of wayfinding are employed to develop a new level of service scale.