Walking on stairs: Experiment and model

Gerta Köster, Daniel Lehmberg, and Angelika Kneidl
Phys. Rev. E 100, 022310 – Published 19 August 2019
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Abstract

An increasing global population forces urban planners to construct buildings and infrastructure that is extremely deep and high. Elevators and escalators serve skyscrapers and tunnels, but in an emergency people still have to walk on stairs. Computer simulations can mitigate risks of escape situations. For these situations, pedestrian locomotion models need to match reality well. Motion on stairs, however, is not nearly as well understood as motion in the plane. Publications are scarce and some are contradictory. As a result, movement on stairs is usually modeled by slowing down pedestrians by a fixed factor. But is this justified? And what happens at intermediate landings? This contribution aims to clarify inconclusive results of previous research and provide new information to directly incorporate empirical results into a parsimonious computer model. The algorithms are freely available through an open-source framework. After outlining the shortcomings of existing approaches, we present three experiments, from which we derive requirements for the computer model. Reenacting computer experiments shows the extent to which our model meets our observations. We conclude with an applied example, simulating an evacuation of Germany's famous Neuschwanstein Castle.

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  • Received 19 November 2018

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.100.022310

©2019 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Interdisciplinary PhysicsNonlinear Dynamics

Authors & Affiliations

Gerta Köster* and Daniel Lehmberg

  • Munich University of Applied Sciences, Lothstrasse 34, 80335 Munich, Germany

Angelika Kneidl

  • accu:rate Institute for Crowd Simulation, Rosental 5, 80331 Munich, Germany

  • *Author to whom all correspondence should be addressed: gerta.koester@hm.edu

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Issue

Vol. 100, Iss. 2 — August 2019

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