Formulation of pedestrian movement in microscopic models with continuous space representation

When the microscopic pedestrian models, in which pedestrian space is continuously represented, are used to simulate pedestrian movement in the buildings with internal obstacles, some issues arise and need be dealt with in detail. This paper discusses two of the issues, namely formulating the desired direction of each pedestrian in the buildings and determining the region around each pedestrian, other individuals and obstacles in which affect his or her movement. The methods for computing the desired direction and effect region are proposed, using the algorithms for the potential of pedestrian space. By numerical experiments, the performance results of three proposed formulae for the desired direction are compared, the method for the effect region is tested, and the validity of the method for computing the desired direction as considering the border effect of obstacles is verified. Numerical results indicate that the proposed methods can be used to formulate pedestrian movement, especially in the buildings with internal obstacles, in the microscopic models with continuous space representation. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.