Spatial and temporal analysis of pedestrian egress behavior and efficiency

This research reports on exploring analytical methodologies for spatio-temporal data of pedestrian egress dynamics in a crowded environment. The research objective is to spatially and temporally quantify, visualize, and examine pedestrian egress behaviors and efficiency. The data of pedestrian dynamics on four different egress scenarios were collected with the use of Global Positioning System. The data were spatially analyzed with the measurement of tortuosity, which is a property of a movement path being tortuous. Specifically, fractal analysis was employed for quantifying tortuosity of movement paths and answering two specific research questions; 1) how does the structure of egress route affect the egress efficiency; 2) how does the pedestrian mode impact the egress efficiency? In terms of spatio-temporal analysis, the data of each path were visualized as a 3D space-time path, which is an individual trajectory starting from its origin and ending at its destination when using two-dimensional plain to show geographical positions and use perpendicular dimension to represent the time. Providing the 3D visualization of space-time paths helps to qualitatively and quantitatively analyze the spatio-temporal patterns and tendencies for pedestrian egress dynamics.