Empirical Studies on Impacts of Obstacle inside Corridor on Pedestrian Flow

AbstractEmpirically, pedestrian motion can be studied at various levels. At the macroscopic level one may study the basic flow parameters (like speed and density) of pedestrian motion, at the microscopic level one may track the paths followed by individual pedestrians while moving. Whereas, at a mesoscopic level one can study pedestrian motion by concentrating on how the flow parameters change spatially and temporally. Such studies help in understanding pedestrian flow at a reasonably fundamental level and also aid in understanding how various geometric features impact pedestrian motion. In this study, macroscopic and mesoscopic level data are collected from various experiments aimed at understanding impact of corridor geometry on uni–directional and bi– directional pedestrian flow. First one is a “basic uniform width” or a “reference” corridor. To impose geometric variations in the corridor two different procedures are adapted, i) narrowing (symmetric as well as asymmetric) of the corridor, and ii) partial bifurcation of the corridor (by placing obstacle for a certain distance inside the corridor). Experimental details and results on narrowed corridors and their comparisons with the “reference” corridor are presented in another earlier paper. This study concentrates on experimental details and results on partially bifurcated corridor and their comparisons with the “reference” corridor. These experiments are intended to observe the lateral and longitudinal variations in density and longitudinal variations in speed due to the impact of various corridor geometry when pedestrians can walk side–by–side as well as overtake one another. To understand the lateral and longitudinal variations in density some crucial parameters are introduced in this study, which prove to be good quantitative measure in this regard. Results both on density and speed accentuate the fact that partial bifurcation in the corridor adversely impacts pedestrian flow inside the corridor