Quantitative description of jam formation in pedestrian streams

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Andreas Schadschneider; Professor Dr. Armin Seyfried
• Subject Area: Traffic and Transport Systems, Intelligent and Automated Traffic ; Urbanism, Spatial Planning, Transportation and Infrastructure Planning, Landscape Planning ; Statistical Physics, Nonlinear Dynamics, Complex Systems, Soft and Fluid Matter, Biological Physics
• Term: from 2013 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 237590515

For the design of escape routes in buildings and large scale events reliable specifications and tools for the dimensioning of pedestrian facilities are needed. However, up to now fundamental questions regarding the dynamics of large pedestrian streams are open. This is reflected in conflicting building regulations within Germany. The aim of our project is to achieve a reliable quantitative description of pedestrian streams by experiments and modelling.Results from models indicate that the heterogeneity of pedestrians influence the formation of jams in pedestrian streams. In the proposed project this hypothesis will be tested experimentally. We expect to improve our understanding of the emergence of critical situations in pedestrian streams. In the modelling we will try to improve on recent developments where the focus was on the precise modelling of volume exclusion. Now we try to realize an improved steering of the agents, considering a forecast of the environment. With this we want to describe quantitatively the dynamics of pedestrian streams at corners, T-junctions and bidirectional streams.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants