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Recent crowd disasters highlight the importance of properly planning and designing large urban events and public spaces to enhance the safety of people in a crowd during evacuations. Pedestrian crowd dynamics are empirically investigated with an interdisciplinary approach (i.e., social sciences, computer science, and traffic engineering) focusing on the effect of groups and their proxemic behavior and interactions while walking. Empirical evidence achieved from urban in-field observations and laboratory experiments are presented and compared. Results indicate that the proxemic behavior of walking groups has a negative effect on walking speed when flow is irregular (primarily because of the need for members to maintain spatial cohesion during locomotion). These results have important implications for the design of common metrics to characterize spatial interactions among pedestrians and for the validation of models to replicate crowd dynamics that consider the effects of groups under normal and emergency conditions.

New generations of computer-based simulations of pedestrian crowd dynamics are aimed at improving both scientific knowledge about such complex social phenomena and practical use of the results for more efficient, safer management of pedestrian circulation dynamics in urban scenarios. Within this twofold framework, the validation of the developed models with field data plays a central role, and the acquisition of empirical evidence about human behavior during locomotion is mandatory. An empirical investigation of pedestrian personal space (i.e., the area surrounding an individual while walking and into which strangers cannot intrude without causing discomfort) is reported. The investigation was developed in an ad hoc experimental setting to collect meaningful data (e.g., measurements of the front zone of personal space under static and moving conditions). The main results are presented to illustrate both the adopted experimental setting and the related data-collection method. These results represent an innovative contribution toward defining a metric for the characterization of spatial interactions among pedestrians and allowing the validation of simulation models dedicated to the study of the dynamic behavior of pedestrian crowd phenomena.

Recent crowd disasters highlight the importance of properly planning and designing large urban events and public spaces to enhance the safety of people in a crowd during evacuations. Pedestrian crowd dynamics are empirically investigated with an interdisciplinary approach (i.e., social sciences, computer science, and traffic engineering) focusing on the effect of groups and their proxemic behavior and interactions while walking. Empirical evidence achieved from urban in-field observations and laboratory experiments are presented and compared. Results indicate that the proxemic behavior of walking groups has a negative effect on walking speed when flow is irregular (primarily because of the need for members to maintain spatial cohesion during locomotion). These results have important implications for the design of common metrics to characterize spatial interactions among pedestrians and for the validation of models to replicate crowd dynamics that consider the effects of groups under normal and emergency conditions.

New generations of computer-based simulations of pedestrian crowd dynamics are aimed at improving both scientific knowledge about such complex social phenomena and practical use of the results for more efficient, safer management of pedestrian circulation dynamics in urban scenarios. Within this twofold framework, the validation of the developed models with field data plays a central role, and the acquisition of empirical evidence about human behavior during locomotion is mandatory. An empirical investigation of pedestrian personal space (i.e., the area surrounding an individual while walking and into which strangers cannot intrude without causing discomfort) is reported. The investigation was developed in an ad hoc experimental setting to collect meaningful data (e.g., measurements of the front zone of personal space under static and moving conditions). The main results are presented to illustrate both the adopted experimental setting and the related data-collection method. These results represent an innovative contribution toward defining a metric for the characterization of spatial interactions among pedestrians and allowing the validation of simulation models dedicated to the study of the dynamic behavior of pedestrian crowd phenomena.