Experiment and Modeling of Microscopic Movement Characteristic of Pedestrians

Evacuation models considering microscopic movement characteristics are efficient and helpful for designing safe evacuation facilities, while crucial parameters adopted in the models are important and valuable for calibrating or improving the evacuation models. In this paper, the method and technology for executing and analyzing two crucial controlled experiments, single-file experiment and bottleneck experiment, are reviewed in detail. Based on the observation and some typical characteristics of the single-file experiment, a one dimensional continuous distance model (CDM) was proposed in our previous work and in this study it is improved by introducing the desired walking direction so as to describe the two-dimensional bottleneck movement. Experiment results such as velocity, lateral sway, step frequency vs. distance headway, velocity vs. distance headway, flow, and lane formation are analyzed. In particular, the mode of lane formation is discussed and the critical widths for lane formation are obtained. Comparison between simulation and experiment shows the CDM and its improved version can describe the pedestrian movement very well.