Simulation of Pedestrian Route Choice in Large-Scale Public Space: Shortest-Path vs. Quickest-Path

The primary objective of this study is to present a social force model (SFM) to address the pedestrian route choice problem in large-scale public space (LSPS). Data were collected by video survey in Ningbo, China. A pedestrian route choice model was developed to account for influences associated with each route choice process: distance, numbers, pedestrian interaction, and environment attraction. Classic SFM was employed to estimate model parameters. Simulation results show that evacuation time of the quickest-path is shorter than the shortest-path, which is 16.7% higher than the shortest-path in evacuation efficiency. SFM approach results showed that evacuation time contains differences between the quickest-path and shortest-path, namely, the smaller the evacuation number, the better the close, and vice versa. It was also found that the quickest-path is higher than the shortest-path for the utilization ratio. The result enhanced our comprehension of factors related to shortest-path and quickest-path in pedestrian route choice.