A social agent pedestrian model

This paper presents a social agent pedestrian model based on experiments with human subjects. Research studies of criminology and environmental psychology show that certain features of the urban environment generate fear in people, causing them to take alternate routes. The Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) strategy has been implemented to reduce fear of crime and crime itself. Our initial prototype of a pedestrian model was developed based on these findings of criminology research. In the course of validating our model, we constructed a virtual environment (VE) that resembles a well-known fear-generating area where several decision points were set up. 60 human subjects were invited to navigate the VE and their choices of routes and comments during the post interviews were analyzed using statistical techniques and content analysis. Through our experimental results, we gained new insights into pedestrians’ behavior and suggest a new enhanced and articulated agent model of a pedestrian. Our research not only provides a realistic pedestrian model, but also a new methodology for criminology research. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.