Observations of passenger flow and verification of a crowd dynamics model

This paper reports observations of passenger flow in the Wuchang railway station in Wuhan, China during the Chinese Traditional Spring Festival in 2006. The data collected are used to verify a crowd dynamics model previously developed. The crowd dynamics model is based on simulating the global movement of each individual under the influence of the surrounding crowd, and the good agreement between the predictions and observations validates the prediction model. The crowd dynamics model suggests that the crowd movement speed is dominated by two factors: the front-back inter-person effect, and the pedestrian’s self-motive. The first effect gives logarithmic relationship between the crowd speed and crowd density. The second factor depends on the individual motive driven with which people try to divorce themselves from the control of the crowd movement. The prediction model are helpful to guide the design of public traffic systems for effective crowd dispersal. Biography: YUAN Jianping (1980–), male, Ph.D. candidate, research direction: building fire safety, crowd evacuation.