Crowd Movement. Predicting pedestrian movement in public space.

Research Project, 2021 – 2023

The project aims to support decision making in the urban planning and design process through the development of simulation models to predict pedestrian movement, which is central for many processes in cities e.g. sustainable mobility, development of local markets, social integration. Furthermore, these simulations can be used to forecast citizens relative exposure in public spaces to e.g. noise, wind and air pollution, but also green exposure.

Because supporting decision making in the urban planning and design process is the primary aim, the models we develop have a particular focus on the built environment variables (e.g. built density, program, street centrality, street width, etc) that can be influenced through design and planning and that affect pedestrian movement.

Two modelling approaches will be integrated to seamlessly simulate movement patterns from the macroscale (e.g. city, neighbourhoods) to the microscale (e.g. street crossing, public square). The first builds on a statistical model, while the second uses agent-based modelling.