2001/06/01 by Dirk Helbing, Péter Molnár, Illés J. Farkas +2 · 6 citations
Engineering · #Evacuation and Crowd Dynamics #Traffic control and management #Urban Design and Spatial Analysis
paper · doi:10.1068/b2697
crossref issued 2001/06/01 · crossref published 2001/06/01 · crossref published-online 2001/06/01 · crossref published-print 2001/06/01 · openalex publication_date 2001/06/01 · crossref created 2006/07/05 · crossref deposited 2025/03/10 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/25 · crossref indexed 2026/08/06
Although pedestrians have individual preferences, aims, and destinations, the dynamics of pedestrian crowds is surprisingly predictable. Pedestrians can move freely only at small pedestrian densities. Otherwise their motion is affected by repulsive interactions with other pedestrians, giving rise to self-organization phenomena. Examples of the resulting patterns of motion are separate lanes of uniform walking direction in crowds of oppositely moving pedestrians or oscillations of the passing direction at bottlenecks. If pedestrians leave footprints on deformable ground (for example, in green spaces such as public parks) this additionally causes attractive interactions which are mediated by modifications of their environment. In such cases, systems of pedestrian trails will evolve over time. The corresponding computer simulations are a valuable tool for developing optimized pedestrian facilities and way systems.