Macroscopic pedestrian flow model with degrading spatial information

This paper presents a macroscopic dynamic model for pedestrian flow with degrading spatial information. In this model, it is assumed that a pedestrian has the ability to realize the local walking cost degrades with the "distance" away from him/her, which is measured by the perceived travel cost incurred between origin and destination. Each pedestrian always chooses a path with the lowest instantaneous perceived walking cost to the specific destination, based on current traffic conditions that is available at the time of decision-making. This model is numerically solved by a cell-centered finite volume scheme and a fixed-point iterative sweeping method. A numerical example for pedestrian evacuation in an L-shaped channel is designed to validate the capability of this model and the effectiveness of the present algorithm. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.