A fine discrete field cellular automaton for pedestrian dynamics integrating pedestrian heterogeneity, anisotropy, and time-dependent characteristics

Abstract

This paper proposes a discrete field cellular automaton (CA) model that integrates pedestrian heterogeneity, anisotropy, and time-dependent characteristics. The pedestrian movement direction, moving/staying, and steering are governed by the transfer equations. Compared with existing studies on fine-discretized CA models, the proposed model is advantageous in terms of flexibility, higher spatial accuracy, wider speed range, relatively low computational cost, and elaborated conflict resolution with synchronous update scheme. Three different application scenarios are created by adjusting the definite conditions of the model: (1) The first one is a unidirectional pedestrian movement in a channel, where a complete jam in the high-density region is observed from the proposed model, which is missing from existing floor field CA models. (2) The second one is evacuation from a room, where the evacuation time is independent of the discretization factor, which is different from previous work. (3) The third one is an ascending evacuation through a 21-storey stair system, where pedestrians move with constant speed or with fatigue. The evacuation time in the latter case is nearly twice of that in the former.