English

Quantitative analysis of pedestrian counterflow in a cellular automaton model

Physics and Society 2012-07-25 v1 Cellular Automata and Lattice Gases

Abstract

Pedestrian dynamics exhibits various collective phenomena. Here we study bidirectional pedestrian flow in a floor field cellular automaton model. Under certain conditions, lane formation is observed. Although it has often been studied qualitatively, e.g., as a test for the realism of a model, there are almost no quantitative results, neither empirically nor theoretically. As basis for a quantitative analysis we introduce an order parameter which is adopted from the analysis of colloidal suspensions. This allows to determine a phase diagram for the system where four different states (free flow, disorder, lanes, gridlock) can be distinguished. Although the number of lanes formed is fluctuating, lanes are characterized by a typical density. It is found that the basic floor field model overestimates the tendency towards a gridlock compared to experimental bounds. Therefore an anticipation mechanism is introduced which reduces the jamming probability.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1206.3084,
  title  = {Quantitative analysis of pedestrian counterflow in a cellular automaton model},
  author = {Stefan Nowak and Andreas Schadschneider},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1206.3084},
  year   = {2012}
}

Comments

11 pages, 12 figures, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. E