Simulation of Pedestrians and Motorised Traffic: Existing Research and Future Challenges

Review Of Pedestrian Simulation Models

In this section, a review of existing pedestrian simulation models is carried out. The review is an update and improvement of the review presented in Papadimitriou et al. (2009). The pedestrian simulation techniques analysed range from macroscopic to microscopic simulations, of continuous or discrete time, of time- or event-based transition. The related research topics cover traffic flow and level of service, crowd and evacuations, route choice etc.

The review is representative of past and current trends in pedestrian simulation; however it is not exhaustive, especially as regards crowd and evacuation simulation, where a great number of studies are available. Given that the scope of this paper is to focus on simulation studies on vehicle / pedestrian interaction, only the main aspects of crowd simulation are presented. For more comprehensive reviews on this particular topic the reader is referred to Duives et al. (2013).

Moreover, the analysis of pedestrian models intended to be used in wireless mobility models is beyond the scope of this research. These models are a particular family of pedestrian simulation models which should satisfy specific requirements (for details the reader is referred to Balercia et al., 2010, Jardosh et al. 2003). Examples of pedestrian simulation models used in wireless vehicular networks have been presented by Meada et al. (2009), who developed the MobiREAL network simulator to design and evaluate mobile ad hoc network protocols and applications, including a method to create urban pedestrian flows mobility scenarios, which reproduce the walking behavior of pedestrians in urban areas. For a review of pedestrian mobility models used in wireless networks the reader is referred to Schindelhauer (2006) and Maeda (2005) and the references therein.