Pedestrian flux analysis in a confined university campus network using entropy and accessibility robustness metrics

Abstract

When discussing urban life, pedestrian accessibility to all main services is crucial for fostering social interactions, promoting healthy lifestyles, and reducing pollution. This is especially relevant in coherent urban agglomerations like university campuses, which feature a high concentration of streets and social facilities. Using WiFi data, we study pedestrian movements within a confined geometric network representing the pathways on a university campus. We estimate the level of crowding in each arc of the network and identify pedestrian flows along all possible paths, measuring the entropy and robustness of the network. In particular, we calculate the information gain achieved through the use of WiFi data and we assess how pedestrian traffic redistributes within the network after the removal of individual arcs. Our results can be used to facilitate the investigation of the current state of walkability across the university campus while also testing a set of methods for analyzing urban complex networks, potentially allowing us to pinpoint areas in urgent need of road maintenance and enhancement.