Survey of pedestrian movement and development of a crowd dynamics model

A survey of crowd movement was recently performed at the main railway station in Wuhan City, China during the traditional Chinese spring festival in 2003. The crowd was formed by passengers in the exit tunnel of the station after getting off a train. The observed maximum density of the crowd and maximum speed of the fastest individual were 2.8 persons/m2 and 1.5 m/s, respectively. The observed crowd movement speed and flow were used to determine values of the key parameters for a crowd dynamics model previously proposed by the authors. The crowd dynamics model is based on simulating the global movement of each individual under the influence of the surrounding crowd. The crowd dynamics model suggests that the crowd movement speed is dominated by two factors: (1) the front-back inter-person effect and (2) the pedestrian's self-driving motivation. The first effect gives a logarithmic relationship between the crowd speed and crowd density. The second factor depends on the individual's motivation, which is driven by people trying to divorce themselves from the control of the crowd movement. The observations and prediction model are useful tools to guide the design of public traffic systems for effective crowd dispersal. © 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.