Cellular automata microsimulation for modeling bi-directional pedestrian walkways

Pedestrian flow is inherently complex, more so than vehicular flow, and development of microscopic models of pedestrian flow has been a daunting task for researchers. This paper presents the use of Cellular automata (CA) microsimulation for modeling bi-directional pedestrian walkways. It is shown that a small rule set is capable of effectively capturing the behaviors of pedestrians at the micro-level while attaining realistic macro-level activity. The model provides for simulating three modes of bi-directional pedestrian flow: (a) flows in directionally separated lanes, (b) interspersed flow, and (c) dynamic multi-lane (DML) flow. The emergent behavior that arises from the model, termed CA-Ped, is consistent with well-established fundamental properties.