A qualitative evaluation of technologies and techniques for data collection on pedestrians and crowded situations

ABSTRACT

This paper provides an overview and a qualitative evaluation of the available technologies and techniques that can be applied to data collection on crowds. The issue is not trivial, as it doesn't exist an established method or a standard technique, or technology, to collect information on crowds, neither are established the dimensions of crowds that are relevant to gain knowledge about crowd dynamics. Data collection constitutes a critical issue also for pedestrian simulation, especially for the validation phase of simulation cycle. Introduction briefly resumes the main theories on crowds and introduces the kinds of quantities that can be measured in a crowd. Section 2. proposes a classification of the technologies that can be applied to crowd data collection while in Section 3. some data collection methods are exposed in details and a suggestion of some scenarios of application is provided. Section 4. will briefly describe a possible scenario of data collection, a stadium. In Section 5. a specific evaluation criteria is established and a qualitative evaluation of localization technologies is presented. Conclusions end the paper.

REFERENCES

• 1: R. A. Berk. A gaming approach to crowd behavior. American Sociological Review, Vol. 39, No. 3, pp. 355--373, 1974.
• 2: H. Blumer. Collective Behavior. Irvington Publishers, 1993. first publishing, 1951.
• 3: C. Borch. The exclusion of the crowd, the destiny of a social figure of the irrational. European Journal of Social Theory 9(1): 83--102, 2006.
• 4: E. Canetti. Crowd and Power. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1984. first publishing, 1969.
• 5: Bovy P. H. L. Hoogendoorn S. P. Van de Reijt A. Daamen, W. Passenger Route Choice concerning Level Changes in Railway Stations. National Academy Press, 2005.
• 6: F. Biasoli L. Colmano Fadin, G. Passengers automatic counting system. Proceedings of the World Congress on Railway Research, Florence, Italy, 1997.
• 7: Le Bon G. The Crowd: a study of the pupular mind. Dover Publications, 2002. first publishing, 1895.
• 8: J. Hightower and Borriello G. A survey and taxonomy of location systems for ubiquitous computing. Technical Report UW-CSE 01-08-03, University of Washington, Computer Science and Engineering, 2001.
• 9: M. R. Hill. Spatial Structure and Decision-Making of Pedestrian Route Selection Through an Urban Environment. PhD thesis, University of Nebraska, 1982.
• 10: Nabeel Koshak and Abdullah Fouda. Analyzing pedestrian movement in tawaf using gps and gis. Proceedings of Remote Sensing Arabia (The first International Conference on Advanced Remote Sensing for Earth Observation: Systems, Techniques, and Applications). May 7--11, 2005, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, 2005.
• 11: P. M. Koushki. Walking carachtersitics in central riyadh, saudi arabia. Journal of Transportation Engineering 114(6), 735--744, 1988.
• 12: L. Kruse. Changing Conceptions of Crowd Mind and Behaviour, chapter Conceptions of crowds and crowding. Springer, 1986.
• 13: L. Levy. A study of sports crowd behavior: The case of the great pumpkin incident. Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 1989.
• 14: Turner L. H. and Killian L. M. Collective Behavior. Prentice Hall College Div, 1987.
• 15: C. McPhail. The Myth of the Madding Crowd. Aldine Transaction, 1991.
• 16: C. McPhail and D. Schweingruber. A method for systematically observing and recording collective action. Sociological Methods & Research, 27(4), 1999.
• 17: K. S. V. S. Janardhan Sarkar, A. K. A study on pedestrian flow characteristics. Proceedings, Transportation Research Board, Washington, 1997.
• 18: B. G. Heydecker Verlander, N. Q. Pedestrian route choice: An empirical study. Proceedings of Seminar F of the PTRC European Transport Forum, 39--49, 1997.
• 19: R. Kukla J. Kerridge J. Hine Willis, A. Pedestrian and Evacuation Dynamics. Springer, 2001.

INDEX TERMS

Keywords:
crowds, data collection