Influence of Gender on the Fundamental Diagram and Gait Characteristics

The crowd structures in different public places or mass events are diverse. Areas with a large fraction of children, elderly pedestrians, or women, who are always referred to as vulnerable groups, will require higher standard for facility design and emergency evacuation. The fundamental diagram and gait characteristics, the basic properties for pedestrian traffic flow and human stepping locomotion, respectively, are essential for facility design and emergency evacuation. Therefore to investigate the influence of gender on the fundamental diagram and gait characteristics is one step to improve facility design and public safety. In this paper, results from experiments on single-file movements involving male and female youngsters are introduced. The fundamental diagram and gait characteristic parameters such as free-flow speed, stop space (minimal required distance to the preceding person), and free-flow space (minimal required distance to walk at free-flow speed) are analyzed considering the impacts of gender. It is found that males have significantly larger stop space and smaller free-flow space than females even if these differences are small. Besides, the gait characteristics between males and females are compared