Determination of Pedestrian Flow Performance Based on Video Tracking and Microscopic Simulations

One of the objectives of understanding pedestrian behavior is to predict the effect of proposed changes in the design or evaluation of pedestrian facilities. We want to know the impact to the user of the facilities (i.e. pedestrian), as the design of the facilities change. That impact was traditionally evaluated by level of service standards (LOS). Another design criterion to measure the impact of design change is measured by the pedestrian flow performance index (PI). This paper describes the determination of pedestrian flow performance based video tracking or any microscopic pedestrian simulation models. Most of pedestrian researches (for best classical examples see ) have been done on a macroscopic level, which is an aggregation of all pedestrian movement in pedestrian areas into flow, average speed and area module. Macroscopic level, however, does not consider the interaction between pedestrians. It is also not well suited for prediction of pedestrian flow performance in pedestrian areas or in buildings with some obstruction that reduces the effective width of the walkways. On the other hand, the microscopic level has a more general usage and considers detail in the design. Case studies by microscopic simulation have been reported 3),4) that the flow performance of pedestrian in the intersection of pedestrian malls and doors could be improved by putting some control such as roundabout or direction rule. More efficient pedestrian flow can even be reached with less space. Those results have rejected the linearity assumption of space and flow in the macroscopic level. Since there are many types of Microscopic Pedestrian Simulation Models (MPSM), there is a need for a unifying language so that all MPSM techniques can be used interchangeably without any confusion. The NTXY database, as explained in the next section, could take the role of language unification. Based on the NTXY database, flow performance formulation can be determined.