Post date: Sep 29, 2015 2:24:26 PM
Understanding not only where pedestrians go but how they get there is extremely important to this project both for the model and for identifying choke points. Since Venice is such a popular tourist destination, there is a lot of information found about popular walking routes online. One example of this is at the first link below. By looking at a variety of these routes, it becomes easier to identify what the most common tourist choke points would be, which could potentially help the team prioritize the locations at which we count. While this does not take into effect any motion of the local Venetians, their routes are more consistent to begin with and are therefore less difficult to predict.
While these routes are able to help with the pedestrians moving through the streets, the way that people meander around a square or a central park is radically different than the way they would walk down a road. The second link in this blog post leads to a paper written in 2000 that analyzes pedestrian movement through a downtown area or central square. Especially with popular destinations like St Mark's square present in Venice, understanding how people typically move throughout a similar common area makes it easier to model them. While the situation and magnitude of tourists in Venice will always be unique, the general habits of people walking around are typically very comparable to anywhere else they may visit.
http://www.routeyou.com/en-it/route/view/35471/walking-route/venice-an-introduction-walk
http://epb.sagepub.com/content/28/3/343.full.pdf+html
-AP