Walking behavior of individuals with and without disabilities at right-angle turning facility

Urban designers need to carefully consider the walking behavior of pedestrians within different walking environments to accommodate their needs. Microscopic studies of the walking behavior of pedestrians have been conducted to understand walking behavior, which is then used for the pedestrian simulation models. A right-angle turning facility can be found in almost every built environment, the study of which is important to build pedestrian simulation models. Previous studies have failed to address the walking behavior of individuals with disabilities although they comprise a large population in the United States. The purpose of this paper is to provide a comparative analysis of the effect of right-angle turning facility on individuals with and without disabilities. The results obtained from this study clearly suggests that individuals with and without disabilities have different behavior at the right-angle facility, suggesting that pedestrian simulation models cannot be modeled in similar manner for all types of individuals. Differences in the walking behavior of individuals with visual disabilities and individuals with mobility disabilities from individuals without disabilities in right-angle turning facility suggests that individuals with disabilities should be considered different from the individuals without disabilities in the simulation models.

[1]  B. Cohen,et al.  Interaction of the body, head, and eyes during walking and turning , 2000, Experimental Brain Research.

[2]  Stefania Bandini,et al.  An Empirical Study of Crowd and Pedestrian Dynamics: the Impact of Different Angle Paths and Grouping , 2013 .

[3]  Majid Sarvi,et al.  Animal dynamics based approach for modeling pedestrian crowd egress under panic conditions , 2011 .

[4]  Anthony Chen,et al.  Considering Individuals with Disabilities in a Building Evacuation: An Agent-Based Simulation Study , 2013 .

[5]  Wolfram Klein,et al.  Microscopic Pedestrian Simulations: From Passenger Exchange Times to Regional Evacuation , 2010, OR.

[6]  Serge P. Hoogendoorn,et al.  Controlled experiments to derive walking behaviour , 2002 .

[7]  Lubos Buzna,et al.  Self-Organized Pedestrian Crowd Dynamics: Experiments, Simulations, and Design Solutions , 2005, Transp. Sci..

[8]  Dirk Helbing,et al.  Simulating dynamical features of escape panic , 2000, Nature.

[9]  Nirajan Shiwakoti,et al.  A Review of Experimental Studies on Complex Pedestrian Movement Behaviors , 2015 .

[10]  Jun Zhang,et al.  Transitions in pedestrian fundamental diagrams of straight corridors and T-junctions , 2011, 1102.4766.

[11]  Tilak Dutta,et al.  Design of built environments to accommodate mobility scooter users: part I , 2011, Disability and rehabilitation. Assistive technology.

[12]  J. P. Roberts,et al.  Predicting the Evacuation Capability of Mobility-Impaired Occupants , 1997 .

[13]  Stefania Bandini,et al.  Heterogeneous Speed Profiles in Discrete Models for Pedestrian Simulation , 2014, ArXiv.

[14]  Keith Bright,et al.  Emergency lighting and wayfinding provision systems for visually impaired people: Phase II of a study , 1999 .

[15]  Charitha Dias,et al.  Pedestrian Walking Characteristics through Angled Corridors , 2014 .

[16]  Stefania Bandini,et al.  Social Groups and Pedestrian Crowds: Experiment on Dyads in a Counter Flow Scenario , 2016, ArXiv.

[17]  K. Nishinari,et al.  Introduction of frictional and turning function for pedestrian outflow with an obstacle. , 2009, Physical review. E, Statistical, nonlinear, and soft matter physics.

[18]  Anne Dederichs,et al.  Evacuation characteristics of visually impaired people – a qualitative and quantitative study , 2015 .

[19]  David Feathers,et al.  Anthropometry and Standards for Wheeled Mobility: An International Comparison , 2010, Assistive technology : the official journal of RESNA.

[20]  YangQuan Chen,et al.  Analysis of Walking Speeds Involving Individuals with Disabilities in Different Indoor Walking Environments , 2016 .

[21]  Charitha Dias,et al.  An experimental study of pedestrians walking through angled corridors , 2014 .

[22]  Alain Berthoz,et al.  How do humans turn? Head and body movements for the steering of locomotion Halim Hicheur and Alain Berthoz , 2005, 5th IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots, 2005..

[23]  Anthony Chen,et al.  Traffic Flow Characteristics of Heterogeneous Pedestrian Stream Involving Individuals with Disabilities , 2015 .

[24]  Anthony Chen,et al.  Time Headway Modeling and Capacity Analysis of Pedestrian Facilities Involving Individuals with Disabilities , 2015 .

[25]  G. Courtine,et al.  Human walking along a curved path. II. Gait features and EMG patterns , 2003, The European journal of neuroscience.

[26]  Nirajan Shiwakoti,et al.  Examining influence of merging architectural features on pedestrian crowd movement , 2015 .

[27]  Bernhard Steffen,et al.  New Insights into Pedestrian Flow Through Bottlenecks , 2009, Transp. Sci..

[28]  Charitha Dias,et al.  Exploring Pedestrian Walking through Angled Corridors , 2014 .

[29]  Mohammad Sadra Sharifi,et al.  Analysis and Modeling of Pedestrian Walking Behaviors Involving Individuals with Disabilities , 2016 .

[30]  G M B Webber,et al.  Emergency lighting and wayfinding provision systems for visually impaired people: Phase of a study , 1999 .

[31]  A. Patla,et al.  Visual control of locomotion: strategies for changing direction and for going over obstacles. , 1991, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.