Heterogeneous Pedestrian Walking Speed in Discrete Simulation Models

Discrete pedestrian simulation models are viable alternatives to particle based models, employing a continuous spatial representation and they are able to reproduce realistic pedestrian dynamics from the point of view of a number of observable properties. The effects of discretisation, however, also imply difficulties in modelling some phenomena that can be observed in reality. This paper presents a discrete model extending the floor field approach allowing heterogeneity in the walking speed of the simulated population of pedestrians. Whereas some discrete models allow pedestrians to move more than a single cell per time step, in the present work we maintain a maximum speed of one cell per step but we model lower speeds by having pedestrians yielding their movement in some turns. Different classes of pedestrians are associated to different desired walking speeds and we define a stochastic mechanism ensuring that they maintain an average speed close to this threshold.