An Investigation Capability Model for Bidirectional Pedestrian Flow

The pedestrian traffic flow in bidirectional walkways is very crucial aspect influenced by the level of pedestrians’ decisions. In this article, the authors show that the simulated pedestrians walking based on crowd dynamics models of low level mechanism of navigation (operational level) are short-sighted in avoiding counter flow. Such limitation resulted in unrealistic formation of motion in bidirectional flow, that the movement is less systematic and the lanes are less coherent than what in real situation. To obtain a more representative model, the authors improve the investigation capability model as a tactical decision model to be incorporated into a crowd dynamics model to reproduce better formation of motion. This is accomplished by granting the pedestrians the ability to investigate the macroscopic behaviors in their investigation areas and make decisions for convenience flow. The new model considers the average density and flow inside such areas and models their effect on the pedestrians' decisions. Simulations are performed to validate the work qualitatively by tracing the behavior of the simulated pedestrians and studying the impact of this behavior on the self-organized phenomenon- lane formation. Furthermore, the fundamental diagram of bidirectional flow is reproduced and compared with experimental fundamental diagrams.