Modeling pedestrian space in complex building for efficient pedestrian traffic simulation

The pedestrians' safety and comfort levels within complex buildings have been attracting more and more attentions. To evaluate the safety and comfort performance of these built environments, a pedestrian space analysis model is incorporated with an agent-based pedestrian model on a Geographic Information System (GIS) platform. Firstly, a bi-layer mesh method is proposed to divide the pedestrian space in complex building into cells. Secondly, the route from an origin to the destination is identified by considering the information of obstacles, entry and exit. After these procedures, a pedestrian space layer on GIS platform is constructed for further simulation. With this layer, pedestrians in the building can make fast decisions on where to move and finally move towards the destination step by step. As case studies, two different designs of train platform and a complex building have been modeled to evaluate the pedestrian flow patterns in them. The results indicated that the simulation platform on GIS can serve as a useful tool to evaluate pedestrian movement in transportation facilities. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.