Effect of group behavior on pedestrian choice for vertical walking facilities

Analyzing the characteristics of group behavior, leader-follower model which adopts dynamic group floor field to represent the attraction in a group is used to model pedestrian group behavior. Pedestrian choice model of vertical walking facilities based on support vector machine (SVM) with the effect of group behavior is established. Fusing pedestrian choice model of vertical walking facilities and leader-follower model into a cellular automata (CA)-based pedestrian simulation model, we simulate the pedestrian choice process for vertical walking facilities with the effect of group behavior. The simulation results indicate that with the effect of group behavior, the choice results of some pedestrians are changed, and the efficiency of pedestrians passing is reduced. To some extent, the efficiency of pedestrians passing is improved with the mean distribution of luggage in each group.