2021 Fiscal Year Research-status Report
Study on the influencing mechanism of the obstacle layout to improve the pedestrian egress
| Project/Area Number |
21K14377
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| Research Institution | The University of Tokyo |
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Principal Investigator |
カ ギョウロ 東京大学, 先端科学技術研究センター, 特任助教 (90898842)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2021-04-01 – 2024-03-31
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| Keywords | pedestrian / obstacle / pedestrian management / egress / crowd |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
Based on the results of pedestrian walking experiments, we explored the influence of the obstacle from both the egress efficiency and perceived congestion, which are two main evaluation indicators of daily pedestrian walking. On the one hand, we found that the obstacle has affected the lane formation of the crowd, thus affecting the egress efficiency. This indicates that the obstacle can be used to adjust the pedestrian lane-formation status, thus controlling the egress efficiency. These results were published in the journal Safety Science. On the other hand, we found that the obstacle could balance the distribution of perceived congestion of pedestrians without deteriorating the overall perceived congestion. This study starts by finding the optimal numerical indicator for perceived congestion. Results showed that although the density has been applied to indicate the physical crowdedness among pedestrians, the velocity outperformed for reproducing the perceived congestion of the low-density-low-velocity pedestrians, those who walk slowly even at low density. Besides, the young and males were found to perceive more congestion compared with the elderly and females. Furthermore, we suggest that the larger the gap between the desired and actual velocities, the larger the extent of the perceived congestion. These results will be published in the journal Transportation Research Part F. We expect our results to contribute to the reasonable placement of obstacles in actual walking facilities with diversified obstacle layouts and pedestrian characteristics.
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| Current Status of Research Progress |
Current Status of Research Progress
1: Research has progressed more than it was originally planned.
Reason
We planned to focus on the obstacle, but the results turned out to be more surprising and generalized. In our research on the egress efficiency, we found that the reason underlying the influence of the obstacle could be the self-organization behavior of pedestrians. Especially in our research on the perceived congestion, we intended to find the optimal local density, whereas ended up finding that pedestrians might perceive congestion because of the gap between desire and reality, which challenged the common sense that people perceive more congestion because of the high local density.
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| Strategy for Future Research Activity |
Based on the experimental results, we plan to conduct modeling and simulation studies. The mechanism underlying the influence of the obstacle could provide evidence for the evaluation of modeling, which will be used to emulate the pedestrian movement under emergency conditions that are rare but fatal in real life. We may also add some experiments to validate the simulation results.
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| Causes of Carryover |
The main focus of the next fiscal year will be the computer simulation, so a high-spec PC will be necessary. Also, depending on the simulation results, we might need to add actual data by conducting actual walking experiments, which need to recruit participants and prepare other equipment for sensing and data recording.
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