Pedestrian Dynamics in Real and Simulated World

The paper examines the knowledge of pedestrian movements, both in real scenarios, and from more recent years, in the virtual simulation realm. Aiming to verify whether it is possible to learn from the study of virtual environments how people will behave in real environments, it is vital to understand what is already known about behavior in real environments. Besides the walking interaction among pedestrians, the interaction between pedestrians and the built environment in which they are walking also have greatest relevance. Force-based models were compared with the other three major microscopic models of pedestrian simulation to demonstrate a more realistic and capable heuristic approach is needed for the study of the dynamics of pedestrians. (C) 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers.