Multiagent Simulation Approach to Pedestrian Laminar Flow with Group Walking Models

We propose a model that combines existing walking and crowd models (the social-force, following behavior, and Boids models) to simulate pedestrian flow under realistic states of congestion. We recorded pedestrians walking in a passage inside Shinagawa Station to capture the actual conditions and compared this with our simulation results to verify the reliability of the existing and proposed models. This confirmed that the proposed model could reproduce actual pedestrian flow better than the existing models. Using the verified proposed model, we examined the number of rows deep in which pedestrians can comfortably walk down a crowded passage. We then calculated the magnitude of the average number of people leaving as well as their walking speed depending on the number of rows deep in which the pedestrians walked. This analysis confirmed that pedestrians could comfortably walk down a passage that is 16-m wide by 64-m long when there are only two or three rows of pedestrian flow.