A macroscopic approach for calibration and validation of a modified social force model for bidirectional pedestrian streams

The original social force model of pedestrians and its variants have been extensively studied in the past. However, little attention has been given to their parameter estimation and validation specifically for the environments with high density and complex phenomena such as self-organization and lane formation. This paper presents a macroscopic framework for calibration and validation of a modified social force model for bidirectional pedestrian streams based on the concept of pedestrian area-wide fundamental diagram, also known as pedestrian Macroscopic Fundamental Diagram (p-MFD). Results demonstrate that the proposed calibration process and the modified social force model can reproduce the empirically observed p-MFD with features such as hysteresis while consistently generating microscopic emergent self-organization and lane formation phenomena. Overall, validation and application results suggest that the calibrated model successfully replicates pedestrian traffic patterns and support the future applications of the model for various operations and planning purposes.