Risk Evolution of On-Bridge Crowds through Region-Level Floor Field Model

Abstract

Footbridges, as the fundamental structures spanning natural or artificial obstacles, not only perform the function of weight-bearing but also entail the role of pedestrian transporting. From the pedestrian transporting point of view, the understanding of how pedestrians move on a footbridge is crucial to ensuring the safety of pedestrians, particularly under the strike of all kinds of emergencies. In this sense, developing a rational and realistic simulation framework to describe the pedestrian dynamics and then to analyze the risk of crowds on a footbridge is of prime significance for a thorough consideration in the design stage and safety monitoring in the operating stage. This paper extended the floor field model onto the region level for a better description of the crowd status on the footbridge. Herein, the factors that influence the moving strategies of the pedestrian were incorporated, such as distance to destination, herding behavior, inertia effect, and right-moving preference. And the pedestrian simulations in different parts of the region were effectively organized to reflect the real status of pedestrian transportation on the footbridge. On the basis of the data extracted from the pedestrian simulation process, a procedure was established to fulfill the task of analyzing the risk evolution of onbridge crowds over the time horizon. As an illustration, two kinds of footbridge schemes were investigated in terms of the crowd’s risk evolution via the adoption of the proposed framework. This work combined the pedestrian simulation model and the risk analyzing method in an integrated framework in a bid to lend some initial, yet original insight into the risk evolution analysis of crowds on the region level from the simulation perspective.