Study On Spatial Characteristics And Exit Selections In Pedestrian Facilities

With the processing of current urbanization progress and the growing material and cultural needs of residents in China, a large amount of urban infrastructure constructions have been carried out. Followed by this, various kinds of large-scale pedestrian facilities are built, which brings a large number of pedestrian traffic. An increasing number of urban residents use pedestrian facilities as a necessary place for their daily life and interactions, and thus forms a sizeable pedestrian traffic flow. Meanwhile, the potential problem of pedestrian evacuation safety in large-scale pedestrian facilities began to cause the extensive concern of society and academia. It needs an in-depth argument and discussion to investigate the issues that what the characteristics of pedestrian evacuation in certain pedestrian facilities are, what kind of indexes can be used to evaluate the characteristics of pedestrian facilities, and what kind of impact that different exit selection strategies can have on pedestrian evacuation.This study is based on the space discrete partition theory of cellular automata (CA) and conducted on the following aspects of spatial characteristics of large-scale pedestrian facilities, pedestrian evacuation flow, and the exit selection strategies of evacuation pedestrains. The main contents of this study are as follows.First, the space features of a large-scale pedestrian facilities are described in this thesis. The construction methods and processes of making a walking space into a network are analyzed on the basis of their relevancies. The characteristics of pedestrian traffic flow are also discussed at both the macro level and the micro level. In addition, a series of indicators which evaluate the space features on evacuation are proposed, which establish a good foundation of the follow-up study on pedestrian distribution in the walking spaces.Second, the exit selection behaviors of the evacuation pedestrian flow when getting out from pedestrian facilities are also discussed in this research. The impacts of the three kinds of exit selection strategies, which are distance-based strategy, time-based strategy, and the mixed strategy, are studied in order to find the key factor of jam and evacuation.Third, a computation sample is set on the basis of North Park, a large shopping mall in Dallas, Texas, which is representative of large-scale pedestrian facilities in the United States. The ideas and methods used in this thesis are detailed explained and illustrated by making computation, analysis, and evaluation of this computation sample.