ORGANISATION OF PEDESTRIAN MOVEMENTS : AN AGENT BASED APPROACH

Abstract

Urban design is based on representative and descriptive models ranging from vague unconscious patterns to descriptive advanced spatial analysis models. Employing these models help in the analysis, decision making as well as in the design process. City, as it enters into the digital and informational era, becomes more complex due to new spatial situation, technology, new prototypes and infrastructure systems. Thinking of the non digital city digitally is becoming more appropriate in urban design. The increasing possibilities of visualizing city, spatial multimedia and virtual reality opens up endless opportunities to explore. The development of urban models is still embryonic in linking with the digital advancements. Pedestrian movement models have been developed since 1970s. Such models have been developed to explain and predict macro, meso, and micro pedestrian movement patterns. The possibilities of applying these models in various stages of urban design process remain open. The corresponding computer simulations are a valuable tool for developing optimized pedestrian facilities. This dissertation tries to explore this vast phenomenon focusing on how simulation technologies are used to analyze the organization of pedestrian movement in an urban environment. Pedestrians can move freely with their individual choices only at small pedestrian densities. Otherwise their motion is affected by repulsive interactions with other pedestrians and with the edges of the built form and the configuration of the streets, giving rise to self-organized phenomena. Examples of the resulting patterns of motion are separate lanes of uniform walking direction in crowds of oppositely moving pedestrians or oscillations of the passing direction at bottlenecks. Although pedestrians have individual preferences, aims, and destinations, the dynamics of pedestrian movement in crowds is surprisingly predictable and alterable