With the Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic spreading across the world, protective measures for containing the virus are essential, especially as long as no vaccine or effective treatment is available. One important measure is the so-called physical distancing or social distancing. In this paper, we propose an agent-based numerical simulation of pedestrian dynamics in order to assess behaviour of pedestrians in public places in the context of contact-transmission of infectious diseases like COVID-19, and to gather insights about exposure times and the overall effectiveness of distancing measures. To abide the minimum distance of 1.5m stipulated by the German government at an infection rate of 2%, our simulation results suggest that a density of one person per 16m2 or below is sufficient. The results of this study give insight about how physical distancing as a protective measure can be carried out more efficiently to help reduce the spread of COVID-19.
@article{arxiv.2007.04138,
title = {Agent-based Simulation of Pedestrian Dynamics for Exposure Time Estimation in Epidemic Risk Assessment},
author = {Thomas Harweg and Daniel Bachmann and Frank Weichert},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2007.04138},
year = {2020}
}