Single-file movement of pedestrians at different visibility levels

Abstract

Previous studies indicate that the movement of pedestrians under poor visibility conditions is significantly different from that under good visibility conditions. To investigate the influence of visibility factor on the longitudinal movement of pedestrian, series of single-file experiments were performed under the quantitative control of visibility level. Based on the extracted trajectories, typical evacuation behavior and movement characteristics of pedestrians under different visibility conditions are explored. It is found that the lateral swing amplitude of pedestrians during movement is within 20 cm under low densities while it is close to 30 cm at high densities. The free velocity under the light transmission of 100 %, 2.2 %, 0.5 % and 0.1 % is 0.856 m/s, 0.823 m/s, 0.741 m/s and 0.712 m/s respectively. Individuals cannot accurately perceive the surrounding situations with the worsening of visual condition, therefore the movement speed decreases under the poor visibilities. Besides, two regimes including the constrained regime and free regime are identified in the headway-velocity relation at different visibility levels. The maximum specific flow under the light transmission of 100 %, 2.2 %, 0.5 % and 0.1 % is 0.70 s−1, 0.67 s−1, 0.62 s−1 and 0.55 s−1 respectively. The study is helpful to reveal the pedestrian dynamics of single-file movement under the limited visibility conditions.