Using agent-based simulation for public space design based on the Shanghai Bund waterfront crowd disaster

Yuanyuan Liu,Toshiyuki Kaneda

doi:10.1017/s0890060420000049

Abstract

AbstractWith growing city density and mass gatherings held all over the world in urban spaces, crowd disasters have been happening each year. In considering the avoidance of crowd disasters and the reduction of fatalities, it is important to analyze the efficient spatial layout of the public space in situations of high crowd density. Compared with traditional empirical design methods, computational approaches have better abilities for quantitative analysis and are gradually being adopted in the planning and management of the urban public space. In this paper, we investigated the official documents, publicly available videos, and materials of the Shanghai waterfront crowd disaster which happened on December 31, 2014. Based on the investigation, a detailed site survey was conducted and pedestrian flow data were acquired. To test the influence of different spatial layouts, an agent-based simulator is built, following the ASPFver4.0 (Agent Simulator of Pedestrian Flow) pedestrian walking rules. With the surveyed pedestrian flow data, the original spatial layout of the Shanghai Bund waterfront together with five other comparison scenarios are tested, including both space design and crowd management improvements. In the simulation results, the efficiencies of different space design and crowd management solutions are compared. The results show that even simple crowd control measures such as capacity reserve and more proper route planning will allow for a positive improvement in crowd safety. The results also compare the efficiency of different spatial operations and give general suggestions to the problems urban public space designers should consider in high-density environments.

Highlights

As our cities become denser and mass gatherings happen all over the world, crowd accidents, including stampedes and other secondary problems, are occurring in increasing numbers
This paper uses an agent-based simulation model developed previously in our laboratory, and the research data are based on the field survey of the site of Shanghai Bund waterfront conducted by the authors
For urban designers who usually do not deal with actual disaster situations and do not have enough information about pedestrian flow patterns, how can they design an urban public space that satisfies crowd safety? What is more important, even though designers provide capacity for the public space, the urban space users gather and use the urban spaces according to their own preferences

Summary

Introduction

As our cities become denser and mass gatherings happen all over the world, crowd accidents, including stampedes and other secondary problems, are occurring in increasing numbers. Crowd safety in urban public spaces has become a new topic for both urban designers and managers. This paper questions how the combination of different spatial separation elements, such as columns and pillars, will affect the crowd safety in a bottleneck area of the public open space and makes hypotheses about spatial layouts and management plans that will improve the situation. Through a detailed analysis of the Shanghai Bund crowd disaster as a case study, this paper attempts to introduce a new design method to urban planners and managers, considering crowd science to be more specific about dangerous space layout plans dealing with large crowds. In the Conclusion section, the space operations that should be adopted or avoided in the urban public space are concluded and further research directions for applying crowd science into engineering practice are discussed

Methods

Results

Conclusion