Predictive Modeling

Post date: Dec 12, 2015 8:24:44 PM

One aspect of pedestrian flow analysis which we have learned more about recently is the importance of creating a computer model which accurately represents the movement of people throughout the city. Models like this work by taking known information on pedestrian movement like total people in the city and the location of popular pedestrian attractions and a map of all the pedestrian routes in the area. The computer then populates the street map with model agents, or people. These model agents are distributed throughout the street map and move as though they were actual people in the city. Ideally the model will have enough information to create a simulation accurate enough to display something close to a cities actual pedestrian movement.

This kind of model is critical for cities to have because there are no existing methods of pedestrian data collection which could gather enough data to show traffic on every backstreet and alley throughout an entire city. A pedestrian model however, would do that automatically. Furthermore, collecting data on current pedestrian movement can only show you where people are or where they have been. A pedestrian model could easily show where people will be in the future. This ability would allow cities to plan ahead for future traffic and congestion problems. Furthermore, a working pedestrian model is far less expensive to maintain than an entire network of automatic counting machines.

Drawbacks to a pedestrian model system are how hard it could be to start. This kind of model requires an enormous amount of data input, data which currently does not exist for Venice. Furthermore, dealing with the problem of semi random movement and the wild fluctuation of total people in the city could be challenging down the road. However, it would be cool to see a model which is tied into a weather service and has predictions which are influenced by daily weather patterns.

A link to a website which has information on pedestrian modeling:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0307904X09001395

A picture of the current VPC pedestrian model.