The influence of individual impairments in crowd dynamics

Summary The importance of empirical relations to quantify the movement of pedestrians through a facility has increased during the last decades since performance‐based design methods became more common. Bottlenecks are of special interest because of their importance for egress routes and as they resu...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Fire and materials 2021-06, Vol.45 (4), p.529-542
Main Authors: Geoerg, Paul, Schumann, Jette, Holl, Stefan, Boltes, Maik, Hofmann, Anja
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Boundary conditions
Disabilities
Egress
engineering egress data
Flow rates
Flow velocity
Flow-density-speed relationships
Heterogeneity
human behaviour
Maneuvers
movement characteristics
pedestrian dynamics
Pedestrians
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Summary:Summary The importance of empirical relations to quantify the movement of pedestrians through a facility has increased during the last decades since performance‐based design methods became more common. Bottlenecks are of special interest because of their importance for egress routes and as they result in a reduced capacity. The empirical relations as the density‐dependent movement speed or flow rate were derived by studies under laboratory conditions, which were usually conducted with populations of homogeneous characteristics for better control of influencing variables. If individual characteristics of a crowd become more heterogeneous, individuals were forced to adapt their individual movement and control individual manoeuvring. These unintended interactions lead to a different shape of the fundamental empirical relations. Here, we present results from a movement study under well‐controlled boundary conditions in which participants with and without different characteristics of disabilities participated. To consider the effect of different heterogeneities on the capacity of a facility, fundamental diagrams are generated using the Voronoi method. If participants with visible disabilities (such as using assistive devices) are part of a crowd, significant differences relating to the shape of the empirical relations and the capacities are found. This indicates that the heterogeneity of a population leads to an increased interpersonal interaction which results in influenced movement characteristics.
ISSN:0308-0501
1099-1018
DOI:10.1002/fam.2789