Simulating Pedestrian Traffic

Pedestrian traffic simulation is an important, sometimes required, stage for certain construction projects such as shopping centers, airports, railway stations, or stadiums. It can also be an important part of an expansion or redesign of a facility such as these. Simulating pedestrian traffic becomes most important in areas of high congestion such as the many chokepoints common to populous cities. These analyses can be used by architects in the design stage, by facilities owners contemplating changes, by city planners to evaluate rush hours, or even by civil authorities to simulate evacuations or other emergencies. Because of the complex, chaotic nature of pedestrian flow, simple analyses fall far short of re-creating actual results and a full-blown simulation is required.

AnyLogic's pedestrian modeling library is one of its key strengths. It is drag-and-drop simple for users to create complex analyses using the coded behavior of our pedestrian objects. These objects (agents) follow basic rules that have been determined by detailed theoretical studies; they move at predetermined rates, they know not to occupy the same physical space as walls or other agents, and they adjust their distance and speed based on the congestion of the crowds around them. All this is done automatically without additional programming. Our results have been proven many times in field studies and customer applications. The Designer simply creates sources and destinations and the pedestrians will find their own way highlighting paths and areas of congestions that may not have been apparent when examining the layout. The designer can create metrics such as total travel time between specified points and vary the experiments to highlight these metrics during times of peak congestion. Background layouts and floor plans or maps can be easily imported and 3-D views are supported allowing the developer to create simulations with multiple views and camera angles that will make pedestrian flow analysis clear to anyone.

In the area pedestrian traffic modeling we offer the following basic services:

• Time and throughput calculation. Assume you are designing a supermarket, subway/railway station, or airport building. The main task is to create a layout to minimize travel time and ensure that pedestrian flows do not interfere with each other. Simulations can easily test for normal, special, or peak volume conditions.
• Pedestrian traffic impact analysis. High-traffic areas such as entertainment parks, museums, sports facilities, etc., need to evaluate the impact of construction changes such as the placement of a new kiosk or advertising panel. The impact on the location of such common things as food vendors, ATMs, turnstiles, or other common elements is a simple experiment to conduct within an AnyLogic simulation. Good planning leads to minimal wait and travel for the pedestrians and overall improved customer experience.
• Evacuation analysis. During evacuation people behave aggressively, trying to leave the risk zone as quickly as possible. In such extraordinary situations it is very important to analyze and organize pedestrian flows. Special staffs are often responsible for evacuation; emergency signs are located to point to emergency exits. Emergency events modeling can help define the optimal evacuation procedure and in the end, save lives.