Next Generation Paradigms in Pedestrian Modeling

Abstract

This paper discusses the development of object oriented, agent based facility simulation tools geared to examining not just physical movement performance, but opera- tional interactions from overarching facility command and control to individual human reactions as experienced during both normative and extreme scenarios. The paper examines how the next generation of facility modeling will make use of agents moving within 3-dimensional space physically interacting with each other using on- board stochastic rules that define their actions and movement geometries. Human agents will have both a physical kinematic presence as well as visual and auditory capabilities to apprehend their environment. The suite of agents involved in the “facility” model will expand from simply representing human actors and simple mechanisms such as escalators and elevators to in- clude the “equipment” pedestrians and facility operators use, both large and small: from cell phones, to wheelie luggage, to signage, to kiosks and stores and their contents, to trains, buses and cars, to their controlling signaling and their centralized command and con- trol centers, to the air and smoke they breathe. Expansion of the physical components that can independently interact will facilitate much more realistic next generation analyses of facility operations under exceptional condi- tions including the disorienting effects of fire, smoke, noise, poor lighting, mis- communication, equipment failure, etc. Such “deep” models will produce new understand- ings of the interaction of humans in the physical environment as distorted under extreme event conditions. The basis of this next generation modeling lies in the creation of autonomous agents – human, non-human and systematic, stochastically parameterized to respond and interact with the other agents in their environment on the basis of behavioral rule sets informed by their perceptual capabilities of “seeing,” “hearing,” and otherwise sampling their environ- ment. An object oriented agent based approach to pedestrian modeling will provide a platform to develop through research deeper understandings of the underlying behaviors that direct human performance and response under stressful situations and can drive facility design and operational protocols to assure competence and capability in untoward situations.