The difference between individuals and social groups in multidirectional movement

Yanghui Hu,Jun Zhang,Weiguo Song

doi:10.17815/cd.2020.67

Abstract

Social groups exhibit some degree of social cohesion that is more than a simple collection or aggregation of individuals. The study on behaviours of social groups is essential to gain a deeper understanding on pedestrian dynamics. In this paper, the crowd movement among individuals and social groups are studied by performing a series of multidirectional pedestrian flow experiments under laboratory condition. Interestingly, we found that the speed of individual is not always higher than that of social groups. Pedestrians try to use different strategies to arrive their destination. With different strategies, their speed and movement time show different properties. These findings may provide basis for facility design and evacuation plan.

Highlights

The studies on human safety and pedestrian dynamics are growing rapidly in recent years
Most of previous studies focused on individuals but only a few works consider the influence of social groups in a crowd on pedestrian dynamics
The speed of individual is not always higher than that of social groups. This is contrary to the findings of [7, 8] who found that individuals are more flexible than social groups and the latter have a negative influence on the speed of crowds

Summary

Introduction

The studies on human safety and pedestrian dynamics are growing rapidly in recent years. Most of previous studies focused on individuals but only a few works consider the influence of social groups in a crowd on pedestrian dynamics. Gorrini et al focused the impact of different densities on pedestrian velocity [7, 8] They found that the walking speed of social groups was slower than that of individuals in both low and high densities. From control experiments Wagnlid et al found that the speed of male dyads was larger than that of male individuals [10] From these studies, it seems that there is no consensus on the speed difference between social groups and individuals. Zhao et al found no difference of the walking path between individuals and social groups in low densities from an observation in a subway station in Beijing. In order to reach the target quickly, some pedestrians made a detour

Data Analysis Method

Results and Discussion

Conclusion