A modified heuristics-based model for simulating realistic pedestrian movement behavior

Abstract

Pedestrian movement simulation models are used in various areas, such as building evacuation, transportation engineering, and safety management of large events. It also provides effective means to uncover underlying mechanisms of collective behaviors. In this work, a modified heuristics-based model is presented. In this model, the potential collisions in the moving process are explicitly considered. Meanwhile, a series of simulations is conducted in two typical scenarios to demonstrate the influence of critical parameters on model performance. It is found that when facing a wide obstacle in a corridor, the larger the visual radius, the earlier the pedestrian starts to make a detour. In addition, when a pedestrian observes a large crowd walking toward him, he chooses to make a detour and moves in the flow in a uniform direction. Furthermore, the model can reproduce the lane formation pedestrian flow phenomena in relatively high-density situations. With the increase of pedestrian visual radius and the weight of potential collision resistance, more stable pedestrian lanes and fewer moving-through-the-counterflow pedestrians can be observed. In terms of model validation, the density-speed relationship of simulation results accords well with that of the published empirical data. Our results demonstrate that the modified heuristics-based model can overcome the deficiency of the original model, and reproduce more realistic pedestrian movement behavior.