Creating a pedestrian behaviour prediction model from an empirical study of the Xu Jia Hui pedestrian network in Shanghai

It is increasingly common for cities across the planet to intensify commercial and residential developments around transportation hubs. With these transportation hubs and the commercial nodes developed immediately around them comes a large volume of pedestrians. In order to have a functional network that does not hinder the operation and activities at the commercial node, there have to be well designed connections between the transportation hub and the various commercial spaces and outlets. In order to create a network that will be efficient and well used by the pedestrians, the future behaviour of pedestrians in such planned environments should be evaluated. This study has utilized approaches from various studies of pedestrian behaviour in complex urban environments and combined them to create a predictive model for pedestrian behaviour at the Xu Jia Hui commercial node in Shanghai, China. The current pedestrian network was studied and analyzed. From those results an equation was developed to predict pedestrian movements; this equation was used to distribute flows heuristically around the proposed expansion of the network. This thesis demonstrates that such a predictive model can be created using a combination of previously used techniques. The results of running the model show that there are problems with the design of the new Xu Jia Hui network that should be addressed