Crowd Monitoring Thesis Final Duives Final Document2-1

Analysis of Pedestrian Crowd Movements at Lowland
Graduation report
D. Duives
March 30th, 2012
pARTIES iNVOLVED
D.C. (Dorine) Duives
stud.nr: 1312677
m.:
d.c.duives@gmail.com
t.:
+31 (0) 6 46 24 1883
(Department of Transport & Planning - CEG)
Supervisory team
Chair:
Prof. dr. ir. S.P. (Serge) Hoogendoorn
m.:
S.P.Hoogendoorn@tudelft.nl
t.:
+31 (0)15 27 85475
Daily advisor:

Dr. ir. W. (Winnie) Daamen
m.:
W.Daamen@tudelft.nl
t.:
+31 (0) 15 27 85927
External member:
Prof. Dr. Ir. B. (Ben) Gorte

m.:
B.G.H.Gorte@tudelft.nl
t.:
+31 (0)15 27 81737
Graduation Coordinator:

Ir. P.B.L. (Paul) Wiggenraad
m.:
P.B.L.Wiggenraad@tudelft.nl
t.:
+31 (0) 15 27 84916
(Department of Transport & Planning - CEG)
(Department of Transport & Planning CEG)
(Geomatics - CEG)
(Department of Transport & Planning CEG)
D.Duives
Analysis of Pedestrian Crowd Movements at Lowlands
Figure 1: Artist impression Lowlands experiment terrain (source : Author)
Preface
Reading guide
Motion has always moved me. This fascination grew from ant hives
when I was a little girl, to pedestrian movements in contemporary days.
The seemingly random movement of individuals form logical patterns at
the scale of crowds. Until four years ago I did not know it was possible
to study these transportation patterns. During an extracurricular research
program, prof. dr. ir. Hoogendoorn brought me into contact with the field
of transportation, which captivated me from the start. In the field of
transportation, individual movements can be anticipated but human crowd
behaviour remains a mystery. Religious, music and sports events can still go
horribly wrong. During my MSc. thesis at Northwestern University I found
out that also the Dutch regulation on major events involving pedestrian
crowds is limited and in some parts inadequate. Not a lot is known about
how the individual behaviour causes crowds to organise. Therefore the
movements of pedestrian crowds remain almost impossible to simulate
due to the sheer lack of knowledge.
The report lying in front of you can either be read in detail or in a skimming
fashion. Each chapter starts with an indication of the work to be presented
within that chapter and ends with a summary of the results. Both the
introductions and summaries are highlighted by light blue text boxes.
For a general gesture of the proceedings in this master thesis reading
these boxes should be sufficient. An in-depth explanation of research
motives, research methodologies and data analysis can be found within
the chapters themselves.

This thesis has been divided in four parts. The first part (A) reviews the
reasoning behind the set-up of this project. It reviews the background,
problem statement, research questions, objectives and methodologies
used in Chapters 1 and 2. Part B (chapters 3, 4 and 5) elaborates on the
state-of-the-art of pedestrian movements and tracking techniques. In
the third part (C) (chapters 6 - 8) the necessary software development is
commented upon. Based on the literature review and a global analysis of
the video data, the list of data analysis software requirements is posed in
chapter 6. In chapter 7 the actual development of the analysis software
is reviewed. The usage of the software is validated in chapter 8. Part D
answers the research question by means of the analysis of pedestrian
movement within the footage in chapter 10. Subsequently a theory is
proposed on the relation between the macroscopic flow characteristics
and the lane-formation characteristics in chapter 11. A general discussion
and recommendations for further research close this master thesis in
chapter 12.
May 23th 2010 prof. Hoogendoorn contacted me about the possibility to

map pedestrian crowd behaviour during Lowlands using an Unmanned
Airborne Vehicle (UAV). Unlike normal MSc projects, the data collection
was planned, designed and performed even before the MSc project was
officially started/kicked-off. This research created an unique possibility to
observe pedestrians in a high density situation while the observation tool
did not interfere with the behaviour of the subjects under observation. This
data collection and analysis are a first step toward the better understanding
of pedestrian movements in crowds.

March 2011

Dorine Duives
D.Duives
III
Executive summary
Introduction
Several pedestrian crowd events that became disasters occurred in
the last decade. Most disasters occurred due to a combination of high
densities, small passage ways, panic and the determination of people to
get somewhere. Most of these dangerous events were either religious
festivals, sport or music events. Even though pedestrian crowd events
are organised frequently, not a lot is known about pedestrian crowd
movement. One of the big pop festivals in the Netherlands (Lowlands)
offered the Delft University of Technology (DUT) an opportunity to gather
unique data of undisturbed pedestrian crowd movements by means
of UAV. However, the capabilities of the UAV recording technique for
pedestrian movement analysis are unknown. Furthermore no software is
available to analyze the UAV footage.
Research set-up
The main research objective of this MSc. thesis is to develop a theory
that qualitatively and quantitatively describes why transition(s) between
self-organising crowd movement regimes happen. To do so, this research
investigates which macroscopic flow parameters (walking velocity,
occuring density or flow) influence the transition(s) between selforganising pedestrian crowd movement regimes and tries to describe
these transition(s) qualitatively and quantitatively. To answer the main
research questions, equipment, software, theory and data analysis related
issues needed to be solved.
To limit the scope of the research, this MSc. thesis only considers the
pedestrian movement seen within the footage recorded at the circulation
area of Lowlands and the influence of technology used to record the
D.Duives
footage on the description of the behavior.

The data was collected at the 20th of August 2011 at Biddinghuizen,
resulting in 4 x 10 minutes of usable RAW footage featuring low, medium
and high density crowd movement footage. After which an adapted
version of the design process described by Roozenburg and Eekels (1995)
was followed to develop the software. Accordingly, the actual crowd
movements were analyzed using a regular research process.
State-of-the-art
In a discussion of the macroscopic flow parameters it is found that there is
no consensus in the research community about which analysis method to
use. After a discussion of some generic methods based on trajectory data
(Steffen et al. (2010), Older (1968), Navin&Wheeler (1969), Hoogendoorn
(2007)), an adaptation of Edies analysis method for vehicular traffic and
an analysis method proposed by Helbing et al. (2007), it is found that the
last named method provides the best results. This method is therefore
used in the remainder of this research.
Accordingly the movement decisions, the resulting crowd movement
patterns and the mathematical description of pedestrian movement in
contemporary simulation software were reviewed. It is inferred that in
bi-directional flows predominantly lane-formation is present. In denser
regimes of mass crowd dynamics also stop&go waves, turbulence and
expansion are encountered. In this MSc. thesis there has been searched
for a quantitative description of these self-organising movements, but the
quest has been fruitless. To the writers knowledge no researcher has so
far linked the existing flow patterns to the quantitative macroscopic flow V
parameters or even given a quantitative description of the pattern itself.

The macroscopic parameters of pedestrian flow are also under study.
Several scientists have tried to establish a set of fundamental equations
for pedestrian flow, but no consensus has yet been reached. The found
fundamental diagrams and the proposed regimes do not give a lot of grip
on the macroscopic variables that control self-organising behavior. Several
attempts have been made to model pedestrian movements by means
of simulation tools. Based on an analysis of the social force model, the
CA and NOMAD, it was concluded that also in the pedestrian simulation
arena no consensus has been reached on which parameters actually
describe pedestrian movement. Additionally, in a study on the calibration
process of predominant modelling software packages it was concluded
that the actual calibration has been very limited (fundamental diagram
and/or shape of self-organisation patterns). Therefore more (especially
quantitative) data about pedestrian crowd movements is necessary to
provide a better theoretical foundation for pedestrian research.
The current pedestrian detection tracking and movement analysis
techniques were explored. It was deduced that mainly background
modelling is used in practice due to its easy implementation and usage.
It is concluded that due to the limited amount of data available about
each pedestrian, tracking is best done using a point tracking method
implementing an optical flow method. The macroscopic flow parameters
can be calculated several ways. But because trajectories need to be
determined for a part of the analyses, the macroscopic flow characteristics
can also be calculated using the trajectory data.
Software development
In the second part of the MSc. thesis the data analysis software
development process is discussed. Several issues were found to influence
the footage. Movement of the camera introduces interlacing, image

scaling and image deformation. The diminishing light intensity causes the
brightness of recorded pixel colour to decrease. Furthermore, because
the footage was shot from a height of 50 - 100 meters under a slight angle
individual pedestrians are represented very small, they might be occluded
for periods of time and their movement between consecutive pictures is
very small. Besides that, the pedestrian movements are very diverse both
in velocity and density. Based on these issues mentioned above a List of
Requirements for the data analysis software has been composed.
Based on the List of Requirements a combination of three software
programs is developed, being VirtualDub, the ImageTracker by P. Knoppers
(2011) and the newly developed Moving Object Detection and Tracking
Tool (MODT-tool). The first (VirtualDub) cuts the footage into consecutive
frames. The second program (ImageTracker) stabilizes the footage, fixes
the lens distortion and corrects the radiometric error in the loose images.
The MODT-tool is able to detect pedestrians based on computational
contour analysis and/or manual detection. Afterwards the same tool is
able to track pedestrians across an image sequence based on the velocity
prediction by an optical flow calculation and a local search method based
on pixel colour. After detection and tracking the same tool is able to
analyze pedestrian movements.
An evaluation of the software with respect to the List of Requirements
shows that most of desired functional requirements have been met. A
small usability research shows that the interface of the MODT-tool is userfriendly and fits the intended usage. But the calculation speed during the
preprocessing is very low, making online analysis impossible.
Theory development
Visible movement in the stabilized footage, the slight changes in pixel
colour between consecutive frames and problems with high density
detection made a few adaptations of the macroscopic flow parameters
calculation methods necessary. Another velocity calculation method was
proposed to decrease the error introduced by the previous mentioned
issues. Also a Kalman filter is implemented to increase tracking robustness.
Furthermore, the macroscopic variables are filtered in order to exclude
stationary pedestrians.
Using all methods described above, the pedestrian crowd movement
behavior found at Lowlands 2011 has been analyzed. Walking velocities
between 0 and 1.8 m/s were found. The densities range from 0 - 4 P/m2.
Mainly two forms of self-organisation were encountered (no organisation
and lane-formation). Because both sequences 7 and 8 better represent
the previous empirically found fundamental diagrams for goal-oriented
pedestrian behaviour, only these two sequences are used in the remaining
analyses. Because especially lane formation is present in the sequences,
the focus in the remainder of this thesis is on lane formation. To describe
the exact lane formation present in the footage two characteristics are
used:
the number of lanes at a given cross-section
the width of the lane a pedestrian is currently experiencing
Both characteristics are deduced from a macroscopic velocity calculation
first proposed by Helbing et al. (2007).
It was hypothesised that there is a correlation between between the
macroscopic flow characteristics and lane-formation characteristics.
The correlations between both groups of characteristics are analyzed.
The results are displayed in table S.1. In the table
and
represents
D.Duives
respectively the gradient and the intercept of the linear regression line,
the standard deviation and Tb the used test-statistic.
Table S.1. Results of the regression analysis
significant?
number of lanes vs. velocity
0.0088
0.85
0.10
2.01
yes
width of lanes vs. velocity
-00.15
0.89
0.10
-1.04
no
number of lanes vs. density
-0.019
1.57
0.36
-2.31
yes
width of lanes vs. density
0.024
1.28
0.35
9.16
yes
number of lanes vs. flow
-0.0019
1.28
0.44
-0.2
no
0.018
1.12
0.44
6.30
yes
width of lanes vs. flow
It was found that several relationships are significantly different from 0.

From the results it was concluded that the density is the predominant
driver behind lane-formation. But even though the other correlations
cannot be proven with statistical certainty, due to enormous scatter, it is
hypothesized that these will indeed be found to exist when better research
methods (more stable recording equipment, better stabilization and lowintensity recording techniques) and better footage are used. Based on the
previous results a theory is proposed in which all visible trends are taken
into account. It states that when density increases, the width of the lanes
increases and the number of lanes decreases. The theory is visualized
in figures S.3 and S.3. The displayed fundamental diagrams illustrate
the hypothesized correlation between pedestrian macroscopic flow
characteristics and the self-organisation characteristics. In this theory the
four forms of self-organisation in bidirectional movement are proposed to
be different representations of lane-formation. The first phase (lack of selforganisation) is described by a flow with an infinite number of lanes. The VII
Figure S.1: Converse concert at Lowlands 2011 (source: www.converseblog.com)
second phase (lane-formation) is the existence of lanes at medium high

densities. When densities increase even more stop-and-go and turbulent
self-organisation become visible resulting from both the density within
each lane and the build up forces on the border of the lanes.
Figure S.2: Pedestrian self-organisation framework (density vs. velocity)
The data analysis was however influenced by impurities caused by

unstable stabilized footage, the detection method, the tracking method
and the determination of the self-organisation characteristics. These
problems cause an uncertainty of up to 0.1 m/s in the velocity calculation.
Also during the manual interpretation of self-organisation characteristics
mistakes were made. Especially in the interpretation of the number of
lanes, the introduced uncertainties are large (up to 30%). Furthermore
mistakes due to the manual detection of high density regions introduces
fairly big impurities in the data. The detection errors mainly introduced
a deformation of the fundamental diagram. But even with a big amount
of scatter resulting from these uncertainties, several trends could be
proven. These are expected to remain valid when the magnitude of the
uncertainties is decreased. However, more research with more stable
footage and better stabilization methods are necessary to convincingly
proof the other expected correlations.
Figure S.3: Pedestrian self-organisation framework (density vs. flow)
D.Duives
XI
Table of contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
List of Graphs
List of Symbols
XIV
XVI
XVII
XVIII
Part A: Research set-up
19
Chapter 1. Research Motives

1.1 Problematic Crowd events

1.2 Lowlands

1.3 Problem statement

1.4 Objectives

1.5 Main research question

1.6 Assumptions and boundaries

Chapter 2. Approach and Methodology

2.1 Data collection

2.2 Lens calibration process

2.3 Research Approach

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Part B: Literature Review
33
Chapter 3. Traffic flow theory

3.1 Vehicular microscopic parameters

3.2 Vehicular macroscopic parameters

3.3 Pedestrian interpretation of macroscopic parameters
Chapter 4. Pedestrian movement patterns

4.1 Pedestrian movement decision theory

4.2 Self-organizing behavior patterns

4.3 Empirical results fundamental diagram

4.4 Empirical research into phase transitions

4.5 Simulating pedestrian movements

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4.6 Calibration effort os pedestrian simulation models
Chapter 5. Tracking techniques

5.1 Object detection techniques

5.2 Object tracking techniques

5.3 Direct estimation of macroscopic flow characteristics
Part C: Software development
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Chapter 6. Quick-scan footage

6.1 Initial footage analysis

6.2 Recording technique

6.3 Light exposure issues

6.4 Movement of subjects in the footage

6.5 List of Software Requirements

Chapter 7. Software synthesis

7.1 Video to RAW image sequence

7.2 Stabilization, orthorectification and lens calibration

7.3 RAW image sequence to pre-processed sequence

7.3.1 Optical flow method

7.3.2 Background subtraction method

7.4 Pre-processed sequence to tracked object

7.4.1 Loading of information

7.4.2 Detection

7.4.3 Tracking

7.5 Altering detection & tracking input

7.6 Tracked object to data

7.6.1 Macroscopic velocity calculation

7.6.2 Microscopic velocity calculation

7.6.3 Macroscopic density calculation

7.6.4 Flow calculation

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D.Duives

7.6.5 Trajectory calculation

7.6.6 Scatter plot calculations

7.7 Final software package

Chapter 8. Software evaluation

8.1 Review list of requirements

8.2 Usability research

8.3 Calculation speed

8.4 Robustness w.r.t. erroneous input

8.5 Conclusion
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Part D: Theory development
113
Chapter 9. Analysis of software results

9.1 General tendencies data analysis

9.2 Stable footage

9.3 Pixel colour issues

9.4 Density issues

9.5 Velocity calculation

9.6 Kalman filter

9.7 Fundamental diagram
Chapter 10. Analysis self-organising movements

10.1 General tendencies

10.2 Movement related issues

10.3 Density related issues


10.5 Self-organising behavior

10.6 Self-organisation estimation scheme

10.7 Self-organising movements
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Chapter 11. Crowd movement framework

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11.1 Regression analysis

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11.1 Self-organisation estimation

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11.2 Velocity vs. self-organisation

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11.3 Density vs. self-organisation

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11.4 Flow vs. self-organisation

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11.5 Discussion of the results

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11.6 Proposed theory

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Chapter 12. Discussion and recommendations
145

12.1 Review of the results
145

12.2 Discussion
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12.3 Conclusions
151

12.4 Implications

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12.4Angles for further research

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Postface & Acknowledgements

XVII

Bibliography

XIX

XI
lIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1:
Figure S.1:
Figure S.2:
Figure S.3:
Artist impression Lowlands experiment terrain

Converse concert at Lowlands 2011
Pedestrian self-organisation framework (k vs. v)
Pedestrian self-organisation framework (k vs. q)
II
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Figure A.1:
Chapter 1:
Figure 1.1:
Figure 1.2:
Figure 1.3:
Figure 1.4:
Shibuya crossing pedestrian flow
17
Pedestrian crowd disasters

Lay-out Lowlands terrain.
Lowlands at the Hemelbrug

Project boundaries

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26
Chapter 2:
Figure 2.1:
Figure 2.2:
Figure 2.3:
Figure B.1:
Chapter 3:
Figure 3.1:
Figure 3.2:
Figure 3.3:
Figure 3.4:
Figure 3.5:
Figure 3.6:
Figure 3.7:
Figure 3.8:
Figure 3.9
Figure 3.10:
Figure 3.11:
Figure 3.12:
Density calculation problem

Voronoi diagram approach
Visual representation 3.23
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Chapter 4:
Figure 4.1:
Figure 4.2:
Figure 4.3:
Figure 4.4:
Figure 4.5:
Decision structure pedestrian movement

Lane-formation

Stripe- formation

Zipper effect at a narrow passage

Stop & go waves in uni-directional flow

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Square - (source:Hachiko)

Example point detector

Example background modelling
Example segmentation

Taxonomy of tracking methods
Kalman filter

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Hadj
73
Lowlands footage - total shot

Footage analysis model
Camera suspension
UAV mounted with camera

Calibration shot

Interlacing images
Helicopter view camera bias

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Photos of UAV data gathering technique at Lowlands

Photos of the calibration process

Proposed methodology MSc project

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A packed Alpha tent at Lowlands
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Chapter 5:
Figure 5.1:
Figure 5.2:
Figure 5.3:
Figure 5.4:
Figure 5.5:
Figure 5.6:
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Figure C.1:
Chapter 6
Figure 6.1:
Figure 6.2:
Figure 6.3:
Figure 6.4:
Figure 6.5:
Figure 6.6:
Figure 6.7:
Trajectory example

Explanation variables used by Hoogendoorn (2007)
Analysis trajectory data - names variables

Non-homogeneous space-time region

Trajectory example

Pedestrian trajectories

Example addition of vectors

Visual specification of equation 3.14 - 3.16

Problem equation 3.19

Figure 6.8:
Figure 6.9:
Figure 6.10:
Figure 6.11:
Figure 6.12:
Figure 6.13:
Figure 6.14:
Figure 6.15:
Chapter 7:
Figure 7.1:
Figure 7.2:
Figure 7.3:
Figure 7.4:
Figure 7.5:
Figure 7.6:
Figure 7.7:
Figure 7.8:
Figure 7.9:
Figure 7.10:
Figure 7.11:
Figure7.12:
Figure 7.13:
Figure 7.14:
Figure 7.15:
Figure 7.16:
Figure 7.17:
Figure 7.18:
D.Duives
Image from first data recording sequence

Image from last data recording sequence

Pedestrian movement area 1
Pedestrian movement area 2
Layout terrain - pedestrian areas
Singular pedestrian detected
Footage 05, t=2.18, densities Lowlands

Footage 07, t=2.26, densities Lowlands

Flow diagram ImageTracker

Orthorectification objects

Raw image footage 0002, t=2000

Stabilized image footage 00002, t=2000

Dimensions velocity matrix

Velocity vector matrix

Background subtraction method

Flowcharts a. Manual detection

Detection by computer

Flowchart Tracking procedure

Flowchart detection and tracking tab

Legend macroscopic velocity diagram
Example macroscopic velocity plot

Example microscopic velocity plot

Example density plot

Explanation intensity calculation

Flowchart final software package structure

Initialization tab

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Figure 7.19:
Figure 7.20:
Figure 7.21:
Figure 7.22:
Figure 7.23:
Figure 7.24:
Vector analysis tab

Background & foreground tab
Detection and tracking tab

Calibration tab

Pedestrian movement analysis tab
Union Station - New York

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Chapter 8:
Figure 8.1:
Calculation time software program
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Festival Isle of Wright
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Rotation plane around XY-axis

Dense crowd image
Example velocity averaging

Kalman filter implemented in MODT-tool
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Origin/destination locations pedestrians

Trajectories sequence 5, t=5000

Trajectories sequence 8, t=5400-5500
Trajectories sequence 7, t=5200-5300
Indication of zones with pedestrians

Indication of zones without pedestrians
Moving density hotspots

Moving high density area sequence 7 - start
Moving high density area sequence 7 - end
High density areas

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Figure D.1:
Chapter 9:
Figure 9.1:
Figure 9.2:
Figure 9.3:
Figure 9.4:
Chapter 10:
Figure 10.1:
Figure 10.2:
Figure 10.3:
Figure 10.4:
Figure 10.5:
Figure 10.6:
Figure 10.7:
Figure 10.8:
Figure 10.9:
Figure 10.10:
XV
lIST OF tABLES
Figure 10.11:
Figure 10.12:
Macroscopic velocity analysis sequence 5

Macroscopic walking direction analysis sequence 7
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Chapter 5:
Table 5.1:
Table 5.2:
Qualitative Comparison of Point Trackers

Qualitative comparison of Model-Based Trackers
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Chapter 11:
Figure 11.1:
Figure 11.2:
Figure 11.3:
Figure 11.4:
Figure 11.5:
Pressure on both sides

Pressure on one side
Unequal pressure on both sides

Pedestrian self-organisation framework (k-v)
Pedestrian self-organisation framework (k-q)
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Chapter 12:
Figure 12.1:
Figure 12.2:
Figure 12.3:
Figure 12.4:
Figure 12.5:
Figure 12.6:
Figure 12.7:
Koninginnedag Amsterdam Museumplein

Averaging over location

Rotating over the XY-axis

Cut-out sequence 7, t=5700

Detection error

Lowlands grounds next to ALPHA tent

ALPHA tent
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Chapter 11:
Table 11.1:
Table 11.2:
Table 11.3:
Table 11.4:
Table 11.5:
Table 11.6:
Table 11.7:
Table 11.8:
Researched correlations

Hypothesis test lane-formation vs. walking velocity
Regression analysis number of lanes vs. density
Regression analysis width of lanes vs. density
Regression analysis the density vs. width of lanes
Regression analysis the number of lanes vs. flow
Regression analysis the width of lanes vs. flow
Summary regression analysis

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lIST OF gRAPHS
D.Duives
Chapter 4:
Graph 4.1:
Graph 4.2:
Graph 4.3:
Graph 4.4:
Graph 4.5:
Summary of the range of velocity-density functions

Summary of the fundamental diagrams

Average pedestrian fundamental diagram

Average pedestrian fundamental diagram

Pedestrian crowd movements on the Jamarat bridge
Chapter 9:
Graph 9.1:
Graph 9.2:
Graph 9.3:
Graph 9.4:
Graph 9.5:

Fundamental diagram (k-v) sequence 5

114
Fundamental diagram (k-v) sequence 7

114
Fundamental diagram (k-v) with indication behavior
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Fundamental diagram (k-v) without adaptations
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Fundamental diagram (k-v) without influence stationary 118
people
Chapter 10:
Graph 10.1:
Graph 10.2:
Graph 10.3:
Graph 10.4:
Graph 10.5:
Graph 10.6:
Graph 10.7:
Graph 10.8:
Graph 10.9:
Graph 10.10:
Graph 10.11:
Graph 10.12:
Velocity distribution per density class

Histogram velocities sequence 5



Histogram experienced densities sequence 5
Histogram experienced densities sequences 7
Histogram experienced densities sequences 8
Fundamental diagrams sequence 5



Fundamental diagrams sequences 5, 7 & 8
Histogram width of lanes

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Graph 10.13:
Graph 10.14:
Histogram number of lanes

Scatterplot number of lanes vs. width of lanes
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Chapter 11:
Graph 11.1:
Graph 11.2:
Graph 11.3:
Graph 11.4:
Graph 11.5:
Graph 11.6:
Graph 11.7:
Scatterplot number of lanes vs. walking velocity

Scatterplot width of lanes vs. walking velocity
Scatterplot number of lanes vs. density

Scatterplot width of lanes vs. density

Scatterplot density vs. width of lanes

Scatterplot number of lanes vs. flow

Scatterplot width of lanes vs. flow

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XVII
List of Symbols
A
A0
d i
Di
ei
f(x)
Fi(t)
h i
k
l
Li
mb
me
n
n a
nv
q
ri
R
R0
R2
si

t
T

UL
Uij

Area of gridcell

[m2]
Pedestrian type specific constant

[-]
Distance covered by pedestrian i

[m]
Destination of pedestrian i
[-]
Direction of pedestrian i

[-]
Function of x

[-]
Summation of forces working on i at time t
[-]
Time headway of pedestrian i

[s]
Density

[P/m2]
number of lanes

[-]
Proximity costs incurred by pedestrian i
[-]
Number of positions at moment tbegin
[-]
Number of positions at movement tend
[-]
Number of objects

[-]
Number of arrivals at cross-section at x1
[-]
Number of departures at cross-section x0
[-]
Flow

[P/m/s]
Period pedestrian i is present

[s]
Influence

[-]
Pedestrian type specific constant

[-]
Linear regression - coefficient of determination [-]
Distance headway of pedestrian i

[m]
Linear regression - Estimator

[-]
Time interval

[s]
Time instance

[s]
Time interval

[s]
Linear regression - test statistic

[-]
Local mean velocity

[m/s]
Difference in location between ped i and object j[m]
Velocity of vehicle/pedestrian i

[m/s]
w
x
xi
X

yi
Width of lanes in the lane-formation

Location

Linear regression - explanatory variable
Road section

Center of Gravity - x-variable

Linear regression - dependent variable
Center of Gravity - y-variable

Acceleration constant

Linear regression - correlation intercept

Linear regression - correlation gradient

Linear regression - correlation coefficient

Relative constant longitudinal vs. lateral acceleration

Standard deviation

Reaction time of pedestrian i

Potential of attraction of pedestrian i

Directional effect

[m]
[m]
[-]
[m]
[-]
[-]
[-]
[-]
[-]
[-]
[-]
[-]
[-]
[s]
[-]
[-]
Part A: Research Set-up

The following two chapters elaborate on the necessity of this research. The first chapter reviews the current
problems with respect to pedestrian crowd events. Also the objectives and the main research question
are presented. A discussion on the assumptions, boundaries and context of the research ends chapter 1.
Chapter 2 progresses with a review of the set-up of the experiments and the research process.
17
Figure A.1: Shibuya crossing pedestrian flow (source: Panaramio - Chrisjongkind)
D.Duives
Figure 1.1: Pedestrian crowd disasters

From left to right, top to bottom: Love Parade Germany
2010, Kalubai temple 2005, Cambodja Water festival
2010, 4 mei celebration 2010, Hillsborough Sheffield 1989,
Mekka Hadj 1998, Heizelberg 1995.
cHAPTER 1: Research Motives

The following chapter elaborates upon issues that provide the context
of this MSc project. It starts with the discussion of recent problematic
crowd events. Afterwards the problem is explained and sub-problems
are highlighted. Furthermore the research objectives are described. The
research questions combined with the project boundaries are elaborated
upon in the last section of this chapter.
Hadj Mekka, May 1998 ( + before and after)

At the pilgrimage at Mekka 119 people lost their lives while being pushed
off the structures surrounding the Kaaba. Almost every year people die in
the massive crowds during this pilgrimage. Especially during the stoning
process at the Jamaarat both crush and misdirected pebbles cause severe
injuries and even death.
1.1 Problematic crowd events
Love Parade Duisburg, July 24th 2010 (Love Parade, 2009)

The techno party ended in a disaster when a crowd became dead locked
in the tunnel system just before the entrance of the festival grounds. A
small breach upwards was forced over the surrounding ground banks. In
the stampede following the small breach in the fences 20 people lost their
lives.
In the past decade several devastating crowd disasters occurred, some

without fatalities, others with major loss of life. Especially sport events,
music events and major pilgrimages cause a gathering of extreme crowds
where small triggers can lead to terrible results (NOS A. (2010)). Figure
1.1 displays a few of the major events where pedestrian crowd movement
reached dangerous climax. In the following alineas the most notorious
ones are further described and analyzed.
Heizeldrama, May 29th 1985
Riots between English and Italian supporters during the finals of the Euro
Cup ended in the assault of a neutral ring of supporters. In the following
stampede 39 people lost their lives and 400 people were hurt. (NOS A.
(2010))
Hillsborough Sheffield, April 15th 1989
At the Hillsborough stadium in Sheffield the pressure on the crowd was
too much for 96 soccer fans that were crushed to death while trying to
enter the stadium. (NOS A. (2010))
D.Duives
Cambodja water festival, November 2010 (NOS B. (2010))

More than 370 people lost their lives at the water festival in 2010 due
to asphyxiation in a dead locked crowd on a bridge in Phnom Pen. The
real panic situation began after a couple of people fainted in the crowd.
Besides crushing also drowning cost several people their lives.
In all the above described disasters the combination of very high
densities due to massive attendance, small passageways, panic and/or
determination of pedestrians to reach a certain location created very
dangerous situations
19
1.2 Lowlands
Also in the Netherlands big pedestrian events with massive pedestrian
attendance are organized (Amstel Gold Race, Bavaria CityRacin, Pinkpop,
etc.). The regulation for pedestrian crowd events is almost non-existent
in the Netherlands. The few rules that do exist are unclear and only
account for safe egress and overall attendance. The organization of
pedestrian crowds events is helped by a better understanding of the
underlying pedestrian crowd movements that determine whether a
festival safe or actually deadly. One of the music festivals (Lowlands) has
given the DUT access to do pedestrian crowd movement research.
Figure 1.2: Lay-out Lowlands terrain.
In several cases a deadlock of opposing streams was observed that

became lethal not only due to the interpersonal pressure, but also due to
unstable shock-like pressure waves that propagated through the crowds;
i.e. people were lifted of their feet, fell and got trampled. The problems
experienced before/during/after sport events are normally one-off
occasions. However, due to inflexible design in earlier years bottlenecks
at specific points throughout the pilgrimages routes cause problems
almost yearly. Especially yearly occurring massive crowd movements
are helped by a better understanding of crowd movements and crowd
management.
Lowlands is a music festival that over the course of three days presents
a diverse range of entertainment, i.e. music, literature, film, cabaret,
theatre, etc. The festival was founded in 1967 and has since 1993 been
held at the event terrain Walibi Holland at Biddinghuizen (Wikipedia,
2011). In 2011 Lowlands is held on 19 21 of August. 55.000 visitors
attended (Zantigh, 2011). The grounds consist of camping and festival
terrains. Lowlands has several stages and tents, both in- and outdoor
performances were scheduled. The 19th edition of the three-day
festival was organized by the event organizer loc7000 in combination
with concert promoter MoJo Concerts. The Lowlands terrains covers
140 hectares, accommodates 3000 employees, 20.000 m2 of podia
and 50.000 m2 of festival tents (Jorritsma (2009)). The in-house safety
is guaranteed by 500 security employees and 20 security cameras.
The main acts are held at the GROLSCH, ALPHA and BRAVO tents (see
fig. 1.2). At Lowlands high density crowds are frequently observed.
Therefore Lowlands renders a unique possibility to analyze high density
crowd movements and improve our knowledge on crowd behaviour.
1.3 Problem statement
1.3.2 Sub-problems
In low-density crowds one mainly encounters individual pedestrian

movements which only depend on the movement decisions of that
specific singular pedestrian. In a denser crowd several other forms of selforganisation present themselves. All of which will be further discussed in
chapter 4. In the highest, most dangerous flow regime, when the flow is
stopped completely due to excess pressure on the crowd, an energy buildup arises within the crowd. This last flow regime is the most dangerous.
As was mentioned before, this flow regime is still encountered at major
pedestrian events. Decreasing the pressure on the crowd after entering the
turbulent is very hard. Therefore, measures should be implemented that
prevent the most dangerous flow regime from coming into existence.
The main problem can be split in several distinct technology and theory
related questions.
Technology related
Very high density behaviour is rarely observed due to lack of stable video
coverage that can be afterwards analyzed. A new specialist methodology
is needed that is able to film major pedestrian events without interfering
with the actual crowd movement. In this experiment a high velocity
high resolution airborne camera has been used. But as this technique
has not been used for the evaluation of pedestrian crowd movements
before, the implementation of this new technique introduces a lot of
uncertainties (airborne instabilities, unknown GPS location and unknown
altimetry).
1.3.1 Problem
But when and why do regimes present themselves? And what parameters
influence there coming into existence? Simulation by means of pedestrian
models can be used to predict the possible hazardous locations at crowd
events and as such can help prevents crowd crushes from happening.
However, most existing models are not valid anymore under densities
where these self-organising movements are presented. To calibrate
the models for these situations a better qualitative and especially
quantitative description of the macroscopic pedestrian crowd movement
regimes is needed. Furthermore an, at least empirical, quantification of
the transitions point between pedestrian crowd movement regimes is
necessary in order to give crowd managers a tool/guideline to act upon.
Ultimately a model/theory would be the sought answer.
Unlike CCTV (Closed Circuit TeleVision) footage, a high flying air borne
camera gives far less information about each person within a frame.
As such matching individuals across images is a challenge. Because the
images consist predominantly of pedestrian movements, the current
vehicular recognition software cannot be adopted. Adaptation is needed
to account for the continuous 3D-movement (x,y-location and time),
instead of the largely 2D-movement of vehicles. Also in contrast to
vehicles, pedestrians have no rectangular shape, but organic and noncircular as the images were recorded under a slight angle. Due to the
small amount of information per pedestrian and the huge number of
pedestrians per frame also existing pedestrian tracking methods do not
function optimal. Therefore also a new tracking method needs to be
developed.
21
D.Duives
Theory related
The theories describing crowd movements currently range from
microscopic movement descriptions to macroscopic fluid and wave
descriptions. But whether any of the simulation models can actually
predict high density crowd movement is still an unsolved question. There
is no unified theory on how individuals interact within a crowd, and on
how the crowd as a whole moves. To the writers knowledge, most of
the models that are currently on the market and/or used in practice
for prediction, give inaccurate results pedestrian crowd movement
simulations (Helbing 2005). Furthermore, the qualitative description of
the higher density regimes is very limited. Also the description of the
regimes needs to be improved.
There are no quantitative guidelines describing up to what crowd
densities the current models are valid/calibrated. Furthermore, the
usability of the existing pedestrian crowd movements theory is limited
due to coarse descriptions and questionable assumptions about
pedestrian local operative behaviour. Therefore, most contemporary
models have limited applicability in very dense situations.
Figure 1.3: Lowlands at the Hemelbrug (source: www.ididid.eu)
1.4 Objective(s)
The general objective of this MSc. project can be described as the following:
To build a theory that qualitatively and quantitatively describes the transition(s) between self-organising pedestrian crowd movements regimes.
Sub-objectives
The project-based sub-objectives are formulated as follows:. This project will
1.
explore the new airborne camera technique (UAV)

The objective is to gather unique crowd movement footage at a music festival.
2.
explore new data exploration techniques
The objective is to acquire the most precise data possible from the gathered footage.
3.
describe pedestrian crowd behaviour based on macroscopic flow characteristics
4.
describe the quantitative differences between self-organising crowd movement regimes found at Lowlands
5.
define the transition point(s) between self-organising crowd movements regimes at Lowlands
23
D.Duives
1.5 Main research question

The main research questions can be formulated as follows:
Which macroscopic flow characteristics influence the transition(s) between self-organising pedestrian crowd movements regimes?
and
how are the transition(s) between these regimes to be described qualitatively and quantitatively?
To answer this question the following sub questions are posed:

Equipment related
a.
Can stable and processable footage of pedestrian crowd movements be recorded using UAV?

b.
c.
d.
e.
Theory related
How can the macroscopic flow parameters be defined for pedestrian multi-directional movement?
What are self-organising crowd movements?
How are pedestrian movements currently described in simulation models?
Which techniques can be used to translate pedestrian movement footage into pedestrian movement data?

f.
g.
Software related
Can the unstable distorted footage be stabilized, orthorectified and radiometrically corrected?
Can software be developed that translates pedestrian crowd movement footage into pedestrian movement data?

h.
i.
j.
k.
l.
m.

n.
Data related
How are the crowd movements at Lowlands described by means of the macroscopic flow parameters?
What kind of pedestrian self-organising crowd movements are visible at the festival terrain?
Is there a relation between the macroscopic flow parameters and the forms of self-organising crowd movements found?
Can this relation be described qualitatively?
Can the relation be described quantitatively?
Can a theory be proposed describing the relation between the macroscopic flow parameters and the forms of selforganizing crowd movements?
Can transition regimes be indicated?
1.6 Assumptions and boundaries

During the writing of the research proposal assumptions were made and
boundaries were drawn to form a well-defined research area. The starting
points describe the assumptions made about focus of this research
during the analysis of the Lowlands footage. The constraints accordingly
elaborate on the limits of the physical capabilities of the equipment used
in the data collection and later on during this project. The sub-paragraph
assumptions review the assumptions about the context of the crowd that
might be of influence. The boundaries sub-paragraph last of all describes
the limits of the context that is taken into account and what is supposed
to be past those limits. All four flow into the last sub-paragraph that
describes the research context.
The footage is processed on a VAIO VPCEA1S1E (Intel Core i3 330M
1.6.1 Starting points

The Lowlands pedestrians are leisurely walking with a specific goal in
1.6.4 Boundaries
mind but no time pressure.

The Lowlands terrain is flat under a grade of 0 degrees.
The Lowlands circulation space has concrete flooring. Pedestrians do
not have to pay extra attention to where they are walking. (The floor
is no impediment for movement).
Only stationary and walking pedestrians are considered as being
part of the crowd. Lying or sitting pedestrians are supposed to be
obstacles.
No mobility impaired pedestrians are taken into account.
processor 2.14 GHz and 4GB memory) or P. Knoppers computer.
1.6.3 Assumptions
The weather conditions are assumed to be of no influence on the
pedestrian crowd movements that were present in the footage shot
at the Lowlands festival.
The alcohol usage of the visitor of Lowlands has no influence on their
movement behaviour at the moment that the footage was shot.
The behaviour seen in the footage is supposed to be representative
for the general crowd movements at the Lowlands festival.
This MSc project will consider:

The influence of the UAV technique on the footage
The influence of the layout on the movement of pedestrians as
present in the Lowlands footage.
The movement of pedestrians as seen in the Lowlands footage.
The current research literature on geo-referencing, video editing, etc.
related to this project.
The current research literature on microscopic and macroscopic
pedestrian movement under low and high densities.
The contemporary research literature on object tracking and
pedestrian footage analysis.
1.6.2 Constraints
Only the at Lowlands recorded footage is analyzed in the remainder
of this research.
At Lowlands only two specific areas could be covered by the UAV.
D.Duives
25
This MSc project will not consider :

Possible implementation of crowd management measures
The implementation of new safety regulations
The layout of the build environment and how another layout might
influence the pedestrian movements at Lowlands other than the now
present set-up
The footage recording techniques (UAV and video camera)
1.6.5 Context
Combining the above, it can be said that the context of this project
consists of only the pedestrian behaviour visible within the footage at the
circulation areas of Lowlands and the influence of the technology used to
record the footage on the quality of the footage.
Figure 1.4: Project boundaries
1.7 Chapter summary

Several disastrous pedestrian crowd events (Heizeldrama, Hillsborough
Sheffield, Hadj, Love Parade & the Cambodja Water festival) have taken
place in the last decade. It was concluded that all disasters occurred due
to a combination of high densities, small passage ways, panic and a huge
determination of people to get somewhere. Also in the Netherlands
pedestrian crowd events are organized yearly. However, regulation is
limited and inadequate. Thus more research into pedestrian crowd
movements is necessary.
The Dutch music festival Lowlands music festival (3 days of entertainment,
55.000 visitors, 140 hectares) has granted Delft University of Technology
(DUT) access to gather data.
Main research question

Which macroscopic flow parameters influence the transition(s) between
self-organising pedestrian crowd movement and how is the transition
between these regimes described qualitatively and quantitatively?
Last of all the research boundaries , initial constraints, assumptions and
starting points were defined.
From this chapter it can be concluded that the context of this project is
on the pedestrian behaviour seen within the footage at the circulation
areas of Lowlands and the influence of the technology used to shoot the
footage on the description of this behaviour.
The main problems highlighted in this research are:

No exact theory when and why transitions in self-organising crowd
movements
Unknown capabilities new UAV technique
No (online) analysis tool/methodology for crowd movements
This main problem was subsequently split into several smaller theory and
technology related problems.
Based upon the problem description both research objectives and
research questions were proposed. Which are
Main research objective
To build a theory that qualitatively and quantitatively describes the
transition(s) between self-organising pedestrian crowd movement
regimes.
D.Duives
27
27
Figure 2.1: photos of UAV data gathering technique at Lowlands.

a. Controller UAV,
b. Real-time video feed,
c. UAV in the air
Figure 2.2: photos of the calibration process;

a. experiment set-up
b./c. camera suspension
cHAPTER 2: APPROACH AND METHODOLOGY

This chapter gives a brief description of the data collection and the calibration, which form the starting point of this MSc project. Afterwards
the anticipated approach and methodology are further elaborated upon.
Also the planning of this research project is touched upon briefly.
D.Duives
2.1 The data collection
2.2 Lens calibration process
The data collection was done on the 20th of August 2011 at

Evenemententerrein Walibi World in Biddinghuizen while the Delft
University of Technology (DUT), AerialTake and the VPRO were present.
See figure 2.1 for the experiment set-up. The data was gathered by an
octa-copter that records footage via an attached light weight camera. First
the UAV was directed to a location near the festival terrain. Bringing the
octa-copter to a stable hover at predefined locations/camera angles, the
helicopter was able to film the present pedestrian crowd movements on
the Lowlands grounds. In total nine sequences were recorded:
seq 0:
4.42 - 4.47 p.m.
seq 1:
5.05 - 5.11 p.m.
seq 2:
5.18 - 5.27 p.m.
seq 3:
5.35 - 5.45 p.m.
seq 4:
5.49 - 5.58 p.m.
seq 5:
6.20 - 6.29 p.m.
seq 6:
6.26 - 6.40 p.m.
seq 7:
7.31 - 7.40 p.m.
seq 8:
7.41 - 7.49 p.m.
Because the first five sequences are mainly trials and flight 6 was aborted
early, the results consist of 3 x 9-10 minutes of pedestrian crowd
movements footage at locations A and C as indicated in figure 1.2 on page
20.
To transform the measurements to world coordinates, calibration is

necessary. By means of a square checked black&white canvas the precise
distortion of the camera is recorded. This experiment took place on
(Tuesday) the 30th of August 2011. E. Scharp, P. Knoppers, R. Voorrips
were present. The camera was lifted by a crane in the Civil Engineering
Lab to a height of 6 meters, see figure 2.2. Accordingly the same camera
as mounted on the UAV, directioned in a 90-degree angle with respect to
the horizon, was used to take images of the canvas. These images are used
in the calibration process to map the location of each pixel in the original
shot footage onto its supposed location in the undistorted image.
29
Figure 2.3: Followed methodology MSc. project
2.3 Research Approach

In the last 7 months an adapted version of the research process described
by Roozenburg and Eekels (1995) was followed. In figure 2.3 the proposed
approach is visualized.
The grey boxes display the context of the project, which is split in the practical
context (all forms of information gathered during the data collections),
and the theoretical context (all the current theories on pedestrian (crowd)
movement and proposed pedestrian simulation models). Accordingly the
light blue boxes display the 2 main parts of this MSc. project, namely the
design of footage analysis software and the definition of the theory on the
transition between pedestrian crowd movement regimes. The dark blue
boxes display the steps taken. The end of each step is a chapter describing
the results of that step. The red arrows connect the main parts of the
project, while the blue arrows show the interaction between the steps
within each part.
When the software was deemed ready for usage, the second process was
(the definition of the crowd movement theory) started. The second part
started with the qualitative and quantitative analysis of the pedestrian
movement in the footage. Because this second analysis could only be
done after the analysis tool is finished, the second process was shifted in
time and was initialized at the end of the first part. The analysis consists
of the in-depth review of the behaviour found in the data and the possible
reasons for the existence of these trends. Accordingly a provisional
theory has been proposed. However, due to the complicated nature of
the analysis software design and the short period available for this MSc.
thesis, the proposed theory has not been validated.
In figure 2.3 the total followed methodology is depicted in a structure
scheme. The chapters in which each of the steps is treated is displayed
next to the name of the step. The structure scheme does not display the
time necessary to complete each of the blue steps.
In the methodology a regular design process was followed for the design of
the analysis software. This started with a short literature study on detection
and tracking methods. Afterwards the synthesis and simulation contain
the stabilization of the images as well as all other operations necessary
to transform the footage into a workable data set. This tool should, when
finished, at least be able to transform the footage from Lowlands into
usable quantitative data on pedestrian crowd movement, possibly also
other footage recorded by UAV. The exact form of this data will be specified
throughout the software synthesis phase in chapter 7. The feedback loop
between evaluation and synthesis is afterwards used to bring more or less
detail in the synthesis of the analysis software.
D.Duives
31
2.5 Chapter summary

The data collection took place at the 20th of August at Biddinghuizen,
resulting in 3 x 10 minutes of RAW footage featuring low, medium
and high density crowd movement. The camera calibration took place
on the 30th of August at the Delft University of Technology, resulting in
a calibration image of the video lens. In the past 6 months an adapted
version of the research process described by Roozenburg en Eekels (1995)
was followed. This method was followed by a regular research process
was followed to come up with the theory.
Part B: Literature Review

The movement of one pedestrian is seemingly random. However, more than three decades of empirical
studies showed that the movement decisions of distinct pedestrians show similarities, which when combined
generate spatial patterns. Even though pedestrians have their individual goals, aims, and preferences; their
overall movement decisions (dynamics) are predictable. The subsequent chapters discuss the theoretical
framework of pedestrian movements. Chapter 3 reviews the traffic flow theory related to pedestrian
movement research. After which the state-or-the-art of pedestrian crowd movements are elaborated upon
in chapter 4. Chapter 5 discusses the contemporary pedestrian detection and tracking technologies.
33
Figure B.1: A packed Alpha tent at Lowlands (source: Heideroosjes Blog, 2012)
D.Duives
Fig. 3.1: trajectory example (Hoogendoorn 2007)
CHAPTER 3: tRAFFIC FLOW THEORY

Any traffic flow can be described using only a (limited) number of
macroscopic and microscopic characteristics. In the following chapter
the theoretical framework of these characteristics and the empirically
used calculation methods are discussed. The macroscopic characteristics
density, velocity and flow are reviewed. For each of the characteristics
finally a conclusion is drawn about the method to be used in the
remainder of this thesis.
3.1
Vehicular microscopic parameters
In the analysis of vehicular traffic the position of multiple vehicles are

tracked in order to deduce their movement characteristics. A trajectory
is a curve that graphically represents the position of vehicle i in the (t,x)
plane (Hoogendoorn (2007)). Each vehicle trajectory exhibits one and
only one location x for every time instance t. A trajectory holds a lot of
information about the movements of the vehicle. Fig 3.1 contains multiple
vehicle trajectories, describing the longitudinal position of the vehicle
with respect to the roadway in the direction of traffic. The y direction
is seldom shown for vehicular traffic. From the trajectory graph both
time (hi) and distance headways (si) can be determined, respectively the
differences between successive moments in time at a certain location and
the distance between successive vehicles at a certain time instance. The
velocity of a vehicle is represented by the tangent of the trajectory in a
point.
3.2
Vehicular macroscopic parameters
Next to microscopic parameters also the macroscopic flow parameters

can be deduced from the trajectory data of vehicles.

D.Duives
3.2.1 Flow
Flow, which is defined as the number of vehicles passing a cross-section of
a road in a unit of time, is determined by

(3.1)
Where n represents the number of vehicles passing during the unit of
time T and h the mean time headway. In the case of vehicular traffic the
flow is represented as one flow per direction.
3.2.2 Density
The number of vehicles present on a unit of road length at a given moment
is called density. The density is computed using:

(3.2)
Where n represents the number of vehicles present at road section with
length X and si the mean distance headway.
3.2.3 Velocity
Velocity can be determined in two ways. First of all by averaging the
velocities vi of vehicles passing a cross-section during a certain period of
time, the so-called local mean velocity UL.

(3.3)
However, when using the velocities of vehicles vj present on a road section
at a given moment, the arithmetic mean is denoted as the space mean
velocity.
35
Fig. 3.2: Trajectory example (Hoogendoorn 2007)
Fig. 3.4: Non homogeneous space-time region
Fig.3.3: Analysis trajectory data - variable names
Fig. 3.5: Trajectory example (Hoogendoorn 2007)
Which technique is used is predominately determined by the time and

means available for data collection. Considering a traffic flow that is both
stationary and homogeneous, the following relationship between the
macroscopic parameters was found by Greenshields (1935).

q=k*v
(3.4)
The formula states that the number of particles passing a cross-section
per unit of time (q) equals the product of the number of particles present
per unit of distance (k) and the distance covered by those particles per
unit of time (u), where the space-mean velocity is used to describe u.
From the definitions of the macroscopic variables show that both flow
and density are defined as local and instantaneous variables. Referring to
either a cross-section x and a period T or a road section X and a time t.
This makes the formulation inconsistent.
Edie (1965) has proposed a way in which the variables can be defined over
a time-space region. His formulation is consistent with the formulation of
3.1 3.5. The most important property of the new formulation is that
small fluctuations have less influence on the values of the macroscopic
variables. Figure 3.2 is used to explain the altered formulation. In the
marked window within fig. 3.2 every vehicle covers a distance di and is
present during a period ri. The flow can therefore be defined as being:

(3.5)
In the same way also the density can be transformed into a time-space
region variable.

(3.6)

And the mean velocity for a time-space region becomes:

(3.7)
D.Duives
Edies formulation is applicable to all arbitrary closed surfaces in the timespace plane. By means of the vehicle coordinates at the border of the
time-space region the production and travel time can be calculated using
the following two formula.

(3.8)

(3.9)
See figure 3.3 for a visual representation of equations 3.8 and 3.9. The
formulation above is limited to homogeneous space-time regions in
which all vehicles progress with on average unchanged velocity. There
one only records the positions where vehicles enter and exit the spacetime region, the measured average velocities will be lower than the
actual instantaneous velocity throughout a part the space-time region
(fig. 3.4). Besides that, the density and flow change causes a distortion of
the fundamental diagram. Using homogeneous space-time zones such as
indicated in fig. 3.5 solves the difficulties.
3.3 Pedestrian interpretation of macroscopic parameters

The traffic flow theory described previously cannot be adopted straight
away for the analysis of pedestrian flows. Especially the fact that
pedestrians do not all move along the same straight line (lane) complicates
matters a lot. In fig. 3.6 on the following page a schematic example of
pedestrian trajectories is visible, showing pedestrian movement such as
one would for instance encounter in a train station.

3.3.1 Velocity
Within practice, most researchers use one or two methods to find
the velocities at a specific location based on the trajectories found of
pedestrians [Steffen&Seyfried (2010) ,Older (1968); Navin&Wheeler 37
Fig. 3.6: Pedestrian trajectories
Fig. 3.7: Example addition of vectors
(1969); Hoogendoorn&Daamen (2005)]. Either a method based on small

time intervals, such as

(3.10)

Or a method based on the point of entry and exit of each pedestrian.

(3.11)
Resulting in an average standard velocity in observation area A:

(3.12)
Where xi(t) represents the location of person i at time t, n the number of
people present in area A and
the velocity of person i. Both calculation
methods include two forms of uncertainty. A pedestrians outline on the
footage might change, causing a shift in the center of mass, which causes
an additional recorded shift in the velocity vector that is not due to the
movement of the pedestrian. Furthermore a pedestrian has a swaying
walk, causing the velocity vector to shift direction slightly during each
walking step. The average of the local velocities will therefore be larger
than the value of distance per time for longer distances.
To limit the influence of both effects Steffen et al. (2010) proposed a
method where the velocity and direction are calculated based on position
differences between time instances with identical phases in the oscillation
of the walking movement. This method derives characteristic quantities
that give low-scatter sequences for both velocity magnitude and direction.
However, extensive footage pre-processing of each pedestrian trajectory
is necessary to find the swaying movement of each pedestrian, rendering
the method less useful for pedestrian crowd movement analysis.
From vehicular traffic flow theory it is understood that equations 3.5
3.7 do not provide a consistent analysis framework. Edies formulation
D.Duives
would provide consistency. However, vehicles predominantly move in

2D-environments (x,t), while pedestrians move in a 3D-environment (x,y
and t). The equations proposed by Edie with respect to velocity have to be
slightly adapted. Instead of just a numerical value, local velocities becomes
a vector with a direction and magnitude. Adding only the magnitudes
within each space-time region up would result in a nonsensical answer,
since the average direction of movement within the space-time region
would be lost. However, the summation of velocities vectors could also
result in a problematic answer, where the sum of vectors could be zero
while bidirectional positive walking velocities are present within the
space-time region. See for instance the example in fig. 3.7. The actual
magnitudes are greater than zero, yet both magnitude and direction will
be zero when taking the sum of the vectors. The method of Edie can used
to determine the magnitude of movement within each cell. Where
is defined the same as for vehicular traffic (eq. 3.14-3.16), since the time
dimension does not change. However,
is defined as distance, which
does change if one goes from 1D (x) to 2D (x,y).
(3.13)

(3.14)

(3.15)
See figure 3.3 & 3.8 for a visual representation of the difference in
interpretation. The length of the trajectory is seen as the travelled distance
within the time-space zone minus the travelled distance outside the timespace zone during the time interval.
For their work at the Jamarat bridge Helbing et al. (2007) proposed a
39
more intuitive way of presenting local velocities. Their method weights
Fig. 3.9 Problem equation 3.19
Fig. 3.8: Visual specification of equation 3.14 - 3.16
Fig. 3.10: Density calculation problem
the relative influence of the surrounding pedestrians instantaneous

velocity vectors with respect to distance. The functions describing the
method are

Influence of surrounding pedestrian

(3.16)

Local velocity

(3.17)
Where R represents the distance up-to-which the influence of a pedestrians
velocity is taken into account,
the location of pedestrian i with
respect to the location of the cell x, and
the velocity of pedestrian
t at location
. Equations 3.16 & 3.17 provide the means to produce
a local estimate of average velocity, which can be used to calculate a
continuous velocity field. This continuous velocity estimation finds the
average direction of the velocity vector. However, due to the supposition
of vectors the average magnitude is diminished in counter flow situations.
See figure 3.9 for example. All people have the same velocity magnitude,
but the walking direction of person E is completely opposite the walking
directions of persons A D. The yellow arrows and numbers in the figure
display the influence that each pedestrian has on the calculation.
Using equations 3.17 & 3.18 this would mean that the local velocity
becomes

(3.18)
It is found that the average direction of the velocity is very dependent
on the shape of the influence function
. Yet the magnitude of
the velocity should resemble the magnitude of the pedestrianss velocity,
which is

(4*||0,1||+||0,-1|| *4)/8=8/8=1

(3.19)
The fundamental diagram generally represents absolute velocities.
D.Duives
Another interpretation of equation 3.19 is necessary to calculate the

magnitude of velocity correctly for the fundamental diagram.
A manner to do so would be:

(3.20)

Both the magnitude and the direction of the velocity vector are important
for the analyses in this project. It is concluded that the magnitude of the
velocity is best calculated using the classical method based on trajectory
data (eq. 3.10), while the direction of movement is best represented by
(eq. 3.17).
3.3.2 Density
In vehicular traffic flow theory density was defined as the number of
cars on a certain stretch of roadway at a certain time instance. Within
pedestrian flow theory density is generally interpreted the same way. The
classic definition of density is formulated as

k=N/A

(3.21)
Where N is the number of pedestrians within a predefined gridcell and
A the area of the cell. This method has two limitations which will be
illustrated using fig. 3.10. Occasionally one will find a situation where
a pedestrian (E) is on the border of cells (1,2,3,4). In this case in and
out has to be assigned arbitrarily, for instance by centre of mass (cell
3) or position of the head (cell 4). The other drawback is that the density
depends discontinuously on both time and the exact placement of the
measuring area, which might cause large jumps in density for small
areas.
In Fig. 3.10 the density of cells 2 and 4 is equal. However pedestrian D
41
experiences the area as being far more crowded than pedestrian F.
would result in comparing characteristics that are not defined for the same
area, which would provide inconsistent results.
Another solution is provided by Helbing et al. (2007). Instead of defining
an area over which the density is calculated, density is calculated using
a Gaussian distance-dependent weight function. See fig. 3.12 for a visual
explanation of the method. The formula is the following:

(3.23)
Fig. 3.11: Example Voronoi diagram calculation
Fig. 3.12: Visual representation 3.23
Another recently proposed method establishes the individual available

movement area by means of a Voronoi diagram (graph that indicates
borders where the influence of two adjacent pedestrians is equal)
Steffen et al. (2010), see fig. 3.11 for a visual representation. The Voronoi
method solves the first problem, and lessens the second. At the same
time it increases the computational burden greatly. Furthermore, there
is no clear understanding about where to put the Voronoi boundaries
in directions where no other pedestrians are present. Additionally, the
Voronoi diagram changes with every time frame. Linking both velocity
and flow estimations to the same Voronoi cell might proof difficult. This
Thereby both density and velocity can be calculated at any point within
a region without losing consistency between the two characteristics.
Helbing et al.s method allows for a continuous estimation of both density
and velocity. This solves the problem of dependence of the classic density
formulation on gridcell locations. However, the usage of the influence
function is questionable, since the found densities depend severely on
the radius of influence and the influence function chosen. Furthermore,
compared to the classic definition of density (eq. 3.22), the by Helbing et al.
(2007) proposed function underestimates the density. Since the influence
of surrounding pedestrians decreases exponentially with the distance, only
a pedestrian exactly at the location of density determination accounts for a
whole pedestrian. The remainder of detected pedestrians within the radius
of influence is accounted for as less than a whole person. Therefore the
method has no advantages over the classic density calculation method.
The density formulation proposed by Edie for traffic flow is to the writers
knowledge the only formulation that provides the means to also record
flow in the same formulation as the other two characteristics. But, idem
to the formulation of velocity, also in this case adaptations are necessary
to provide a density value that makes sense. For the density especially
the denominator has to be adapted. Looking at the manner in which
the formula is derived, the denominator describes the total area of the
space-time region. This consists of the maximum time span multiplied

by the maximum distance that can be covered by a pedestrian within
the predefined space-time region. For the adapted eq. 3.14 3.16 the
maximum coverable distance within the region is
. Therefore
the denominator becomes
. Rendering the following
(3.24)
But for now, the proposed equation does not result in a comprehensible
result. Because both Edies and Helbing et al.s method are not
comprehensible also the density will be calculated using the classical
method (eq. 3.22).
3.3.3 Flow
The last of the three macroscopic characteristics is generally deduced
by drawing a line across the research space and recording how many
pedestrians pass the line within a certain time frame [Navin&Wheeler
(1969); Schadschneider&Seyfried (2009); Daamen&Hoogendoorn (2010)].
However this method is not consistent with any of the other known density
and velocity formulations. Therefore, this method cannot be used in
cohesion with the other two macroscopic flow variables.

Edie did define flow another way, that makes it consistent with the old
formulation, but also allows flow to be used in relation to density and
velocity. Also the flow definition needed to be adapted for a 2D+time
situation. The following formula is the result:

(3.25)
But, just as with the density formulation, the resulting equation is not
completely comprehensible. Therefore it is decided to use the fundamental
flow equation
to determine the q/k diagram.
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3.4 Chapter Summary

The chapter discussed the traffic flow theory relating to the macroscopic flow parameters. For each of the three parameters (velocity,
density and flow) several methods have been discussed.
Among others:
Generic methods based on trajectory data [Steffen et al. (2010),
Older (1968), Navin&Wheeler (1969), Hoogendoorn&Daamen
(2005)]
Edies method for vehicular traffic and an adaptation for pedestrian
(Edie (1965))
Helbing et al.s method used on the Jamarat bridge data (Helbing et
al. (2007))
Based on the necessary resulting (direction and magnitude) characteristics of the macroscopic flow parameters for further analysis it was
decided to use the classical calculation methods for the remainder of
this thesis. The macroscopic flow parameters are calculated as follows:

Influence of surrounding pedestrian

Local velocity (magnitude)

Local velocity (direction)

Local density at place

Flow

43
CHAPTER 4: PEDESTRIAN MOVEMENT PATTERNS

Pedestrian movement is the result of a multitude of different factors
(both internal and external). Understanding a pedestrians movements
is coupled to understanding the underlying motives. Therefore this
chapter starts with a discussion of research on the theoretical decision
framework of pedestrians. Consequently the empirically found results
of self-organising patterns are discussed. The chapter progresses
with the empirical results on the general pedestrian macroscopic
flow characteristic parameters. Afterwards paragraph 4.4 reviews
whether proof of phase transitions is found within the empirical
found fundamental diagram. Paragraph 4.5 reviews the predominant
pedestrian simulation models and how these models use the gathered
knowledge on pedestrian crowd movements. After which this chapter
ends with a some concluding remarks.
4.1 Pedestrian movement decision theory

A walking person has a continuous process going on in his mind. This is
schematized in figure 4.1.
Fig.4.1: Decision structure pedestrian movement
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The pedestrian decision making process is what we would like to study.

Yet, pedestrian information processing and decision making is a blackbox. What we can observe is the impulses going into the box before the
decision making process starts and the resulting actions coming out of
the box after the decision making process. Based on both the in- and
output conceptual models on the underlying decision structure have
been posed.
4.1.1 Beliefs-Desires-Intentions (Bierlaire (2009))
Klpfel et al. (2009) described an internal decision making process that is
represented on three different levels, Beliefs-Desires-Intentions by. They
can be seen as the strategic, tactical and operational levels of the decision
making process proposed by Hoogendoorn et al. (2009). In each layer of
the decision making process a multitude of decisions is made, becoming
more specific moving down the decision ladder.
On the strategic level a pedestrian decides about its activities and
destinations. In activity decisions the design of existing stimuli, the relative
importance of activity providers and other contextual variables are of
importance. The destination is subsequently dependent on the distance
to the destination in combination with the socioeconomic characteristics
of the pedestrian and the other activities that person has on its to-do
list.
At the tactical level pedestrians decides on a mode and route choice.
Mode choice is normally only explicitly formulated when various building
levels are incorporated in a model, where a choice is present. The route
45
choice is based on destination, activity and mode choices.
At the lowest level in the decision process (operational) decisions on walking,

waiting and activity performance are made. For walking behavior one looks
predominantly at both the direction of the next step and the velocity of the agent.
The decision of the next step is based on either a discretizised visual space of
possible steps, the propensity to keep to the current direction or a combination
of both mentioned before. The environment of a pedestrian consists not only
of the physical environment, but also with other moving objects (e.g. other
pedestrians or vehicles).
Fig. 4.2: Lane-formation
Fig. 4.3: Stripe- formation
Interactions between pedestrians can be divided into three cases, being

group behavior, leader-follower behavior and collision avoidance. The first
case relates to the adjustment of individual behavior to comply with group
wise behavioral patterns. The second captures the propensity of an individual to
adjust her velocity and direction to another individual in order to make her way
through the crowd easier. There does not have to be any connection between the
individuals. There also is no sense of needing to stay together, which influences
walking decisions at a personal level. The last case focuses on the identification
of potential colliding situations and the behavioral solution to these situations.
The collision interaction can be either unilateral, where only the pedestrian itself
is required to take an action to avoid collision, or bilateral, where two pedestrians
meet and (sub)consciously negotiate and decide on the best movement.
From paragraph 4.1 it can be deduced that pedestrians take a lot of (micro)
decisions every split second. Within this research, destination and mode
choice are seen as exogenous data, while walking velocity and route choice are
parameters that can be analyzed. The lower end decisions and interactions such
as group behavior & leader-follower behavior will not be progressed further
in order to limit the scope of the research. Thereby mainly the decisions at a
local operational level are of influence on the movements found on the found
footage.
4.2 Self-organizing patterns

In the last 40 years, lots of experiments have been done to quantify the
behavior of pedestrians at different instances (both varying conditions
and locations) to figure out the variables of the fundamental equation for
walking movements (eq. 3.4). It is presently not clear to what extent these,
mainly computational, simulation experiments can reflect pedestrians
movement decisions in real situations, since it is hard to find suitable reallive observations to calibrate the models. Furthermore cultural influences,
the influence of crowd composition, location, etc. are of such importance
that it is almost impossible to compare results between countries and as
such to reproduce results. However, the found behavior within a instance
of crowd motion (where both location and conditions are approximately
the same) appear to follow the same characteristic macroscopic flow
patterns. In the following paragraphs those patterns will be further
defined by their instance of appearance.
4.2.1 Bidirectional flows

In a bidirectional flow under everyday conditions (un)intentional lane
formation is found (fig. 4.2) (Hoogendoorn 2005). This symmetry breaking
phenomenon is seen as the preference of pedestrians for a certain lane on
the walkway due to less friction in the uni-lateral sub-flow that is formed
(Klpfel et al. (2009)). According to Hoogendoorn et al. (2005) a counter
flow is most efficient when organized in few wide lanes with stable but
permeable interfaces in between the flow. It allows pedestrians to escape
when necessary, and directs them in lanes in the meantime (reference).
An analysis by Campanella et al. (2009) states that the number of lanes
forming is dependent on the heterogeneity of the desired velocity, body
size and reaction time. Nakayama et al. (2005) investigated the instability
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of pedestrian flows in a two-dimensional optimal velocity model. They

found that lane formation occurs mainly at large distance headways (low
densities). When density increases, lanes form temporarily but cannot be
maintained over time due to unstable modes in the x direction. In this
stage blocking finally occurs due to the instability. However at even higher
densities blocking occurs immediately. Nakayama et al. (2005) however
does not state the densities at which this happens. But because both
enquiries used simulation approaches to study lane-formation the results
are disputable. Generally speaking, lane formation is seen as the most
efficient form of self-organizing behavior. However, this has never been
proven in an experimental setting.
4.2.2 Intersecting flows

At places with big intersecting flows stripe formation has been found
(Helbing et al. (2007)). The pedestrians are walking forward with the
stripe and sidewards within the stripe. The stripes exist of clusters of
pedestrians with the same velocity and direction. In the conflict between
two crossing pedestrians, both will not change direction but instead
speed-up or slow down (Hoogendoorn et al. (2005)). The stripe formation
allows continuous penetration of both flows.
4.2.3 Bottlenecks
At bottlenecks the effects seen dependent on the length of the bottleneck.
The compression in the crowd is related to shock waves that produce the
impression in the crowd that it is moving forward while this may in fact
not be the case. The clogging of a bottleneck leads to irregular or even
stopped outflows with an oscillation in the movement (Helbing et al.
(2006)).
Besides clogging also the zipper-effect (Hoogendoorn 2005) is observed.
In this situation pedestrians will allow others within the territorial space 47
Fig. 4.4: Zipper effect at a narrow passage
Fig. 4.5: Stop & Go waves in uni-directional flow - velocity of

person visualized by colour (green - free flow, red - stationary)
just in front of them, as long as the direct space in front of their feet is still
clear. It allows for smaller lanes than the expected width of a pedestrians
territorial zone. In bottlenecks with a moderate width of less than 3
meters, the capacity of the bottleneck increases in a stepwise fashion
with the width of the bottleneck.
4.2.4 Mass crowd dynamics

In mass crowd dynamics several patterns are visible. These patterns
depend on the density of the crowd and the latent energy within the
crowd. Big moving crowds know four distinctive flow regimes. In low
density crowds one mostly encounters homogeneous movement which
is only dependent on the movement of singular pedestrian. In a denser
flow regime one experiences stop&go waves. These are temporarily
interrupted longitudinally flows that appear at higher densities in crowds.
Progressing to an even higher flow regime, one enters the area of turbulent
flows. In this regime a pedestrian has no power over its own movements
anymore. Pedestrians may move both forth and back. When the flow
stops completely one encounters an energy build-up within the crowd.
This build-up of energy can lead to sudden stress ruptures in the crowds,
also seen during seismic events. This last regime is not described well
in literature. The descriptions of pedestrian crowd disasters give reason
to believe in the existence of this most dangerous regime flow regime
(Helbing et al. (2007)).
Side Note
We have searched for a quantitative description of self-organising
movements. But the quest was fruitless. To the writers knowledge
no researcher has linked the existing flow patterns to quantitative
macroscopic flow parameters or other even given a quantitative
description one of the patters.
49
D.Duives
Graph 4.1: Summary of the range of velocity-density functions
Graph 4.3: Summary of the fundamental diagrams found by Fruin, Ando et al,
Predtechenshkii & Millinskii by Thompson and Marchant
Graph 4.2: Average pedestrian fundamental diagram calculated from 25 district investigations for pedestrians walking normally at-grade, deduced by Weidmann
Graph 4.4: Average pedestrian fundamental diagram calculated from 25 district

investigations for pedestrians walking normally at-grade, deduced by Weidmann
4.3 Empirical findings on the fundamental diagram

The results of these internal thought processes and self-organisation
patterns, namely walking was first studied by Fruin, who looked at the
characteristics of pedestrian flow and analyzed the density-velocity
relationship and density-flow rate by investigating commuters on
walkways. Fruin has proposed design guidelines in which density and
flow were linked via a Level of Service concept.
Other scientists have tried to further describe pedestrian walking
movements by means of experiments (Predtetschenski 1971),
observation of natural behaviour (Helbing et al. (2005), Ando et al.
(1988), Turner et al. (1959)) and analysis of disasters (e.g. Johnson
(1987)). They all concluded that at higher crowd densities individual
walking velocities reduce. However, none of them did elaborated on
the intermediate transitions. All agree that higher crowd densities lead
to interactions between individuals and as such will reduce overall
walking velocity. Furthermore, they conclude that distinct fundamental
diagrams are necessary to represent at-grade, downstairs and upstairs
movements. The summarized results of the fundamental diagrams are
presented in graph 4.1. The flow rates found by Turner (1959) fit well
with Ando et al.s, - i.e. a jam point concentration of 5.4 P/m2. Next to the
maximum flow rates Predtetschenski & Milinski (1971), in their study
on the characteristics of pedestrian flow under emergency conditions,
found that pedestrian movement was maximized at a density of 1.08
P/m2 However, maximum flow was achieved of 1.14 P/m/s. Fang et
al. (2003) summarized the work of Fruin (1971), Predtetschenski &
Milinski (1971) and Ando et al. (1988) in one graph and proposed upper
and lower limits for the range of velocities (Fang 2003). The resulting
graph is shown in graph 4.1. Thompson&Marchant (1995) made an
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analysis of the up to that point existing fundamental diagrams, see graph

4.2. The discrepancies found by Thompson&Marchant (1995) between,
the distinct until that point in time, proposed fundamental diagrams were
still very big both in shape and location of the fundamental diagram.
This might be explained by the fact that the main focus of most research
has been focussing on a direct connection between walking velocity,
density and flow. But not the underlying pedestrian characteristics (such
as culture, personal space, self-organisation etc.) that might influence
the macroscopic behaviour depicted by the shape and placement of the
curve in the fundamental diagram. Because the relationship between the
microscopic and macroscopic flow characteristic parameters is unclear,
it is very hard to conclude which of the above proposed fundamental
diagrams represents at-grade walking behaviour the best.

Weidmann (1993) reviewed the work of 25 papers and their resulting
fundamental diagrams, plotted their results in one graph and took the
average over all results. Graph 4.3 represents the estimated fundamental
diagram. Accordingly Weidman did the same for upwards and downwards
stair movement (see graph 4.4). Both graphs present the macroscopic
flow characteristics for a one-dimensional system with a normal/nonpushy crowd. The fundamental diagram proposed by Weidmann is up
to now the generally accepted version of the fundamental diagram for
pedestrian movement.
However, the discussion about the shape of and the domains within the
fundamental diagram is still ongoing.
51
4.4 Empirical research into phase transitions

At least two scientists have tried to divide the fundamental diagram
into flow regimes. Polus (1983) was one of the first to separate different
flow-regimes. He inferred that for densities above the 2 person/m2 the
conditions rapidly approach jamming flow. Ando et al. (1988) identified
the regimes free walking (0.8 P/m2) and non-contact walking (1.8 P/
m2). Ando et al. (1988) further quantified these results, indicating the
regimes stagnation at densities higher than 4 person/m2 (a slow forward
movement is still possible) and solid jamming at 5-6 P/m2 (involuntary
forward movement possible without feet touching the ground).
Graph 4.5. Experimental results of pedestrian crowd movements on the

Jamarat bridge in Makkah during the Hadj deduces by D. Helbing et al.
Seyfried et al. (2005) determined within the Wiedmann fundamental

diagram four distinct domains. In the first domain (k < 0.7 P/m2) walking
velocity is determined by free-flow velocity. In the second slightly denser
domain ( 0.7 P/m2 < k < 2.3 P/m2 ) a reduction of the available space
per pedestrian is visible. Passing movements are not possible anymore,
therefore the desired velocity becomes restricted. Because densities
are still low enough, no contact between pedestrians is necessary. As
such, no internal friction is present within the crowd. Because decreasing
velocity is solely dependent on a reduction of movement space, this
decline is (nearly) proportional to an increase in density. In the third
domain (2.3 P/m2 < k < 4.7 P/m2) the linear decrease of velocity ends. In
this situation contact is hardly avoidable anymore, internal friction within
the crowd comes into existence. In the last domain (k > 4.7 P/m2) the
velocity declines rapidly, therefore walking becomes rather restrictive. In
this domain Seyfried et al. (2005) poses that internal friction might be the
only determining factor in this domain.
Helbing et al. (2007) looked at crowd movements under very high

densities. Three regimes were proposed, being laminar, stop&go and
turbulent flow. Where in laminar flow pedestrians follow each other in a
rather homogeneous way, the stop&go regime entails queuing behaviour
similar to vehicular flows, where shockwaves of high-density regions travel
through the crowd forcing pedestrians to slow down. In the last region
(turbulence) pedestrians are so closely packed that their movement
becomes involuntary. Their motion is not simply in one direction and can be
forced in any direction. Due to stick-slib instabilities where the mass splits
up into clusters of different sizes with strong velocity correlation inside
and distance dependent correlation between the clusters, involuntary
ruptures with high velocity sudden movements appear. During this
phenomenon, often seen during earthquakes, the rims of two in opposite
direction moving masses stick to each other due to high surface forces.
However, when the forces parallel to the flow direction become to high,
both edges abruptly slip past each other until a situation is reached in
which the shear forces are again bearable. In this domain density waves
and force chains are both present. No quantitative values can be added to
these regimes based on the data presented in the paper.
Besides the identification of possible transitions between pedestrian

movement velocities and densities the exact relationship between the
macroscopic flow characteristics of pedestrian movement has been
poorly described.
The experimental results presented by Seyfried et al. (2005) and Helbing

et al. (2007) are discussing different regions within the fundamental
diagram and can therefore possibly be used in accordance. The results
of Seyfried et al. (2005) provide explanations for the low-density crowd
movement developments, where the results of Helbing et al. are valid for
the high-density developments. But the experimental results, the found
fundamental diagrams and the proposed regimes do still not give a lot of
grip on the macroscopic parameters that control the behaviour found.
53
D.Duives
4.5 Simulating pedestrian crowd movements

There are lots of models describing pedestrian movement dynamics. The
representation of pedestrian behaviour models can range from neglecting
movement decisions completely to artificial intelligence, which has as
goal to model the whole decision making process. All models make a
distinction between the modelling of individual movements or the crowd
movement as a whole. In doing so, the researchers make assumptions
about how the pedestrians make decisions. But also about what a crowd
is and how a crowd reacts on impulse.
In the macroscopic approach of pedestrian modelling a crowd is seen as a
fluid, in which particles (/pedestrians) have no or very limited control over
their own movement within the crowd. Furthermore most macroscopic
models assumed that all particles have the same goal or destination
in mind and are trying to reach this using the same objective function
to weight the characteristic parameters of the (distinct) routes. Some
macroscopic models make a distinction between particles with respect to
goal and/or destination.
The microscopic approach assumes the opposite. Depending on the
exact modelling approach the objective function and the operative
characteristics differ between individuals. Furthermore, the particles
have more than limited control over their own movement. There might be
interaction between individuals, but the form of interaction (competition
vs. cooperation) can only be determined based on the difference in
individual characteristics. All microscopic modelling strategies assume
that every individual has a different destination in mind.
In total there currently exist seven distinct ways of capturing the total
pedestrian movements by means of simulation, namely: cellular automata

(CA), lattice gas models, social force models, fluid-dynamic models, Agent
Based Models, game theoretic models and approaches based on animal
experiment. In the following paragraphs the most fruitful ones with
respect to the modelling of crowd behaviour will be further discussed,
being the Social Force model by Helbing, the NOMAD by the DUT and
a Cellular Automat. In the review special attention will be paid to the
description of pedestrian movement and the information necessary to
calibrate the models.
Social Force Model
4.5.1 Social force model (helbing, 1995)
part I
Direction of movement
The fluid crowd modelling method of Henderson (1984) has been the
starting point of development of the Social Force model (Helbing et al.
(1995) and Helbing et al. (2001)). This is a microscopic continuous model
with deterministic force-based interactions. The concept is based on the
assumption that changes in the movement of pedestrians are guided by
social force fields. Sensory stimuli causes behavioural reactions which
depend on personal characteristics. The model assumes pedestrians mostly
face standard conditions. Therefore they will apply optimized behavioural
strategies that they have learned over time such as cooperation and
object avoidance. The main attributions of his model are:
(5.1)
Desired velocity vector

Acceleration due to attraction destination

Where is the reaction time.
part II
Interaction vector

Territorial effect
(5.2)
(5.3)
(5.4)
(5.5)
Repulsive effects by other pedestrians

(5.6)

Where
is the difference in location between the ped. and

the object.
Repulsive effects by borders

(5.7)
part III
Potential of attraction
Attractive effects
Directional effect
Summation of effects

Total Model

D.Duives
(5.8)
(5.9)
(5.10)
(5.11)
1. The pedestrian wants to reach a certain destination, walking in a

desired direction at a desired velocity, asif the destination has an
attractive effect (eq. 5.1 - 5.3).
2. The motion of a pedestrian is influenced by other pedestrians and
objects. Every person has a private sphere in which a territorial effect
is present. The strength of the repulsive effect is based on the distance
between the pedestrian and the object, the pedestrians velocity and
the definitions of the sphere of influence (eq. 5.4 - 5.7).
3. The motion of pedestrians can be drawn towards other persons
or objects. The attractiveness of objects decreases with time since
interest is assumed to decline. Attraction only holds for situations
where the attraction is perceived in the desired direction. As such the
potential of an attraction is a function of the distance to the nearest
attraction (eq. 5.8 - 5.9).
The proposed three effects work in the direction of sight, there pedestrians
cannot or only slightly react on visual impulses outside the line of sight.
Therefore a directional function is introduced (eq. 5.10).
55
The total effect of the social force model is the summation of the
three effects described above combined with a certain form of random
fluctuation (also called white noise) (eq. 5.11). The last can be seen as the
incorporation of randomness in the behaviour of the modelled pedestrians.
The model describes behaviour of pedestrians through superposition of
generalized forces reflecting motivations and environmental influences.
The actual movement and velocity of pedestrians is thus based on
the macroscopic behaviour of the crowd and less on the personal
characteristics of the pedestrian (e.g. congestion patience and velocities)
(eq. 5.12-5.14). The system searches for the lowest amount of entropy/
energy/interaction it can achieve.
Because this model assumes that a pedestrian feels the interactions
with every other pedestrian around him, every iteration consists of an
optimization of the total pedestrian behaviour in that step. This causes
very long calculation times.
The input of this model are destinations, free walking velocities, max
direction of sight, vision field shape parameters and behavioural
characteristics. The output are the changes in walking velocity and
locations, which accordingly can be used to calculate the walking velocity
and locations of every pedestrian during every time step. In the socialforce model the time step size only controls the accuracy of the movement
of pedestrians and the numerical stability of the model, but is not related
to their adopted walking velocity.
Putting all this together, the notion of this model can be summarized
as the superposition of attracting and repulsive effects determining
the behaviour of individuals. The exact effects might differ between
pedestrian instances and models. But as these effects or forces do not

have to be physical in appearance, also other effects as evacuation exits,
sound effects, light effect, stress levels and gradients can be modelled. But
the individual operational behaviour determines the aggregate behaviour
of the crowd.
The assumption of the attractive and repulsive effects in pedestrian
behavior is able to model pedestrian aggregate behavior well for situations
where all effect are known. Whether these forces/effects can be modelled
by exact superposition remains up to questioning (is a human being
a homo economicus or a homo reciprocan). The model copes well for
situations where each pedestrian has only one goal. But the model is not
equipped for pedestrians with activity lists.
Additionally, the social force model has a lot of parameters that can be
adapted. Each of which influences the found pedestrian behavior in slight
way. As written before, not a lot is empirically known about pedestrian
movement decisions. Therefore, the question remains which of these
parameters can be validated based on empirical data, and which need
to be assumed. The social force model basic philosophy is strong, but it
remains questionable whether the amount of detail does not allow for
overfitting of the results.
4.5.2 Cellular automata

A cellular automaton (CA) is a discrete model based on discrete
movements of the pedestrians through a grid of cells, each in one of a
finite number of states (Blue&Adler (2001)). The grid is called a Floor Field
Model when a discrete choice between grid cells is presented to each
pedestrian. The grid can have any finite number of dimensions. In the
contemporary CA models a combination of two distinct but combined
floor fields is used to display the effects working on each pedestrian. A
static field that reflects the infrastructure characteristics and a dynamic
field representing the virtual trace left by moving pedestrians (Ant Colony
Optimization algorithm) and/or influences of nearby agents.
The decision of the direction of movement is based on the status of
neighbouring cells and is calculated in two steps. First pedestrians
decision on their target cell depending on the current believes about their
surroundings (e.g. their desired direction, destination, infrastructure,
other pedestrians and other objects). In the second step their target
cell is updated based on the movement decisions of other pedestrians,
after solving all the conflicts in the system. All movements are updated
at once.
The movement decision is based on the comparison of the desired direction
and the opportunities of the pedestrian to move. These opportunities are
modelled by determining the objective score for the set of accessible cells
for each pedestrian. The cell which provides the minimum objective score
is accordingly logged as the cell one would like to move to.

Direction of movement =

(5.12)

Where = location of accessible cells,

However, more pedestrians might be trying to go to the same cell.
Therefore, in an iterative procedure all the conflicts between pedestrians
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are solved by looking at pedestrian conflict tolerance. The pedestrian

with the least tolerance for conflicts will deviate to another nearby cell.
Most models include place interchanging (step-and-slide) as a solution
for a pedestrian conflicts consisting of two pedestrians moving in exactly
opposite directions.
The velocity of movement is defined by a diffusion model or any other
set of rules defining the behaviour of a singular pedestrian in interaction
with other pedestrians and/or objects. It is however mainly modelled as
the possibility of taking 1 step in every direction per iteration where each
iteration counts for 0.4 seconds (averaging 1m/s). Differences in velocity
are achieved by the decision not to move during the current time step.
The grid itself can be used to incorporate preferred motions of the
pedestrians, e.g. directions to nearest safe zone. There a CA works with
time steps, it is possible to integrate a projection horizon of a hazard to
reflect evolution of decisions.
A CA allows for an intuitive definition of dynamics in terms of simple
operational rules. It also offers a very detailed presentation of walkways
and areas under consideration (Schadschneider (2009)). But walking
velocities are not very accurately, there they are limited to the cell size.
Furthermore a CA is able to represents the decisions on an individual
scale and implement differences in pedestrian characteristics. However,
most CAs can only work with 1 fixed destination per pedestrian in the
area and only a small number of user classes; which makes it harder to
implement in complicated pedestrian situations such as train stations. A
CA model does generally not make a distinction between different walking
velocities. Besides this it specifies only a limited number of cells towards
57
which a pedestrian can move, instead of a continuous direction choice.
But most importantly, in a CA it is hard to incorporate dynamic effects

(such as group structures, attraction from visual information, etc.) in this
model structure.
For CA models the walking velocitys discrete characterization is a
restricting factor. Because of it, CA is generally only implemented in
semi stable situations were all pedestrians have the same velocity, such
as pedestrian corridors, intersections or mass events. Because of their
intuitive modelling of operational behaviour CA is still the main method
used for these instances.
Walker model
Optimal velocity
Velocity pedestrian
Acceleration ped.
where:

(5.15 -5.16)
(5.17)

(5.18)

(5.19 - 5.21)
= weighting factor describing the relative costs of longitudinal vs. lateral

acceleration, L the proximity cost incurred by pedestrian p walking close
to another pedestrian q. the acceleration constant and A0, R0 pedestriantype specific parameters (eq. 5.17 - 5.21).
4.5.3 Walker model

A generalization of the social force model was presented by
Hoogendoorn&Bovy (2004), named NOMAD. The researchers have tried
to define the foundation of the simulated behavior based on behavioral
rules. This model approach includes route choice in continuous time and
space. It combines the local operative strength of an adapted social force
model with the previous unknown possibility of pedestrian route choice
modelling. NOMAD is activity based, meaning that actions of pedestrians
in the simulation model are dependent on the activities pedestrians
want to perform while being within the facility (Campanella et al., 2009).
The operative behaviour and route choice are based on the prevailing
traffic conditions, and allow pedestrians to switch routes throughout the
simulation.
The routes in NOMAD are not considered explicitly, instead the building
blocks (velocities) of the route are determined by means of a minimum
expected cost function. However, different from other models, NOMAD
takes in account more than the distance to a destination in the expected
cost function. The pedestrians will incur a penalty when not arriving at
their destination before the end of the simulation. Furthermore arrivaltime specific costs are incurred (eq. 5.15 - 5.16).
The operative walking decision is based on decisions made at a destination
and route choice level. The model uses differential equations to describe
the behaviour of pedestrian p.
Also in NOMAD the superposition of attracting and repulsive effects
determines the behaviour of individuals. The incorporated route choice
behaviour complements the local operative behaviour, which makes
decision modelling on a more strategic level possible.
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4.6 Calibration efforts of pedestrian simulation

models
There are numerous software packages available that address a multitude
of pedestrian simulation models. Examples of all-round pedestrian models
are:
Legion a collection of programmes developed to model dynamics of
crowds based on an adapted version of social force model (Still 2000;
Berrou 2007)
Myriad II an evolved version of Legion, incorporating multiscalar
pedestrian decisions
NOMAD build around the walker model described in 4.5.3 (Daamen
(2003); Hoogendoorn (2004))
PedGo a CA model developed by H. Klupfel (2005)
VISWALK a social force model integrated in VISSIM (multi-modal
simulation software) (PTV (2010))
Urban Analytics Framework (UAF) by Quadstone Paramics (2012)
SimWalk by Savannah Simulations
Each of these packages incorporates pedestrian walking behaviour
modules. The calibration of these modules consists of the comparison
empirical data gathered during controlled experiments or observations in
practice using manual or infrared detector counting, GPS measurements,
questionnaires or video analysis. Calibration ensures that the fundamental
parameter values are adjusted to the given simulation implementation
scope.

Some quantitative calibration of the above named models has taken
place. However, information about the calibration of commercial models
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is very limited. As far as can be deduced, the quantitative calibration is

done using two distinct forms of data (Kretz et al. (2008)). Firstly, using
one of the up-to-now proposed fundamental diagrams. This form of
calibration aims to recreate the empirically found density, velocity
distribution and flow characteristics. Generally during this calibration
phase the pedestrian characteristics such as preferred free-flow velocity,
acceleration and body circumference are adjusted. When researching the
models named above, it became clear that during the calibration different
empirical experiments and data sets are used. All models have calibrated
the individual pedestrian characteristics based on empirical fundamental
diagram. Several models have also been calibrated using simple pedestrian
experiments as a basis, such as walking up or down stairs, rounding corners
and bidirectional counterflow (Schreckenberg (2003)). It is estimated
that the quality of these calibrations is questionable due to the massive
amount of assumptions involved in the calibration process. Furthermore,
validation of the models has been very limited.
The second form uses empirical pedestrian experiments to recreate selforganisation patterns such as bidirectional lane formation, herding before
a bottleneck and flow through a bottleneck. This type of calibration aims
at adjusting parameters such as the friction coefficient, side preference,
competition behaviour and the distance with respect to objects. Depending
on the parameters in the model that need to be calibrated a different data
set is needed in order to calibrate. Therefore every model is calibrated for
different instances. PedGo for example, is calibrated based on four mayor
evacuation experiments at a boat, primary school and a soccer stadium.
This while NOMAD is calibrated on small pedestrian experiments done at
the TU Delft. For now there is a lack of standardization. In all calibration
procedures mainly the crowd movement patterns are qualitative
reproduced, but the calibration of the computed microscopic interactions
that should display the underlying behavior is dubious at the most in all
pedestrian models.
All models depend to a large extend on the assumed behaviour of
pedestrians, that in turn depends greatly on the fundamental diagram
used. However, the literature review elaborating on the pedestrian
fundamental diagram showed that it is very hard to establish which of
the proposed fundamental diagrams represents walking behaviour best.
At the moment, every time a simulation model is used, calibration has to
be done all over again, since it is unknown how the individual pedestrian
characteristics influence the fundamental diagram. By understanding
the behaviour of pedestrians better, the models better simulate reality.
Therefore more empirical research into pedestrian crowd movements is
necessary. Not only small experiments (<20 persons) but also at the level
of crowds (>300 persons).
4.7 Chapter summary

This chapter starts with a discussion of the movement decisions a
pedestrian makes while walking. From the literature it was deduced
that pedestrians make decisions at three levels, being:
Strategic: destination and activity choice
Tactical: mode choice and route choice
Operational: next step
The empirical crowd movement patterns resulting from the decision
processes in pedestrians mind were studied afterwards in paragraph
4.2. These could be divided into four instances, where each instance
produces a different pattern.
bidirectional movement
lane formation - symmetry breaking pattern where lanes of pedestrians
going in the same direction appear.
intersecting flow
stripe formation - breaking pattern where pedestrians use a decrease
in walking velocity without a change in direction as means of avoiding
other people. Thereby forming clusters of pedestrians with the same
velocity and direction in striped patterns at intersections.
bottlenecks
A growing crowd in front of the exit creates herding while flow through
the entrance flows optimal because pedestrians temporarily allow
others to enter their personal space.
mass crowd dynamics
Stop & go - interrupted longitudinal flows
Turbulence - random both longitudinal and horizontal flows
Expansion - explosion of the latent energy build-up in the crowd
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Paragraph 4.3 progressed with a discussion of the empirically found

fundamental diagram. It was found that although several scientists
have tried to establish a fundamental equation for pedestrian flow,
no consensus has been reached about the final shape of the curve.
For now the curve proposed by Weidmann (1993) is seen as the most
promising.
Paragraph 4.4 tried to establish whether transitions between flow
regimes have been researched. Both Helbing et al. (2007) and Seyfried et
al. (2005) have proposed a partitioning of flow regimes. The experimental
results presented by Weidmann (1993), Seyfried et al. (2005) and Helbing
et al. (2007) are discussing different regions within the fundamental
diagram and can therefore possibly be used in accordance. However,
the fundamental diagrams found and the proposed regimes do not give
a lot of grip on the underlying variables that control the fundamental
diagram.
In paragraph 4.5 & 4.6 the contemporary simulation efforts of
pedestrian crowd movements were discussed. Special attention was
paid to the social force model of Helbing (1995), the CA model proposed
by Adler&Blue (2001) and the NOMAD model by Hoogendoorn&Bovy
(2004). The assumed decision process of pedestrians are modelled very
different. So also at simulation level there is no consensus yet on how to
model pedestrian movement.
Additionally, after studying the calibration processes of the predominant
pedestrian modelling software packages it can be concluded that the
actual calibration has been very limited (fundamental diagram & the
shape of some self-organisation patterns). Therefore more information
61
about pedestrian crowd movements is necessary to provide a theoretical
foundation for the pedestrian simulation models.
Figure 5.1: Square - (source:Hachiko)
CHAPTER 5: TRACKING TECHNIQUES

Knowledge about pedestrian crowd behavior can be gathered via
numerous ways. One of the most common techniques is the analysis
of recorded footage. This technique detects and tracks pedestrians
throughout an image sequence, after which the macroscopic parameters
are deduce from their recorded movements. The following chapter
discusses the state-of-the-art of tracking techniques. Accordingly
concluding remarks are made about which techniques to used during
the remainder of this MSc. project. In the following chapter first a
general description of object detection techniques is given, followed
with a discussion of the contemporary pedestrian tracking techniques.
The tracking of any object in a sequence of images incorporates three
steps (Yilmaz 2006). Namely the detection of an interesting moving object,
the tracking of this object from frame to frame and the analysis of the
objects track to recognize the exact behaviour. Tracking of objects can be
complicated by the loss of information due to projection transformation
from 3D to 2D, noise in the image, the complexity of the object shape,
scene illumination changes, etc. By imposing constraints on the motion
and/or appearance of objects tracking can be simplified.
The conventional tracking methods of pedestrian behaviour
determination consist of direct in-site measurement by human
observers (Predtetschenski&Millinski 1971), controlled experiments
(Daamen&Hoogendoorn 2010), time-lapse photography combined with
statistical models to derive pedestrian walking velocities and densities
(Fruin 1971) and off-line manual analysis of video recordings (Antonini
et al. 2006). The use of manual techniques is a major limiting factor for
extending this kind of work to crowded conditions, long-term studies or
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for situations where on-line surveillance is required. However, automation

has evolved and off- & online analysis is providing promising results. The
last decade the field of visual detection and tracking has been boosting.
Therefore, there is extensive literature on the visual detection and tracking
of pedestrians.
5.1 Object detection techniques

To detect and track an object the virtual features of an image sequence
have to be linked to object characteristics. Common used visual features
are:
1. Colour
The representation of a colour is influenced by two physical
factors. 1.) the spectral power distribution of the light source and
2.) the surface reflectance properties of the object.
2. Edges
The changes in image intensities
3. Optical Flow
A dense field of pixel displacement vectors defining the translation
of each pixel in a previously defined region
4. Texture
A measure of intensity variations in the image surface that is
quantified by the properties smoothness and regularity.
Each of these virtual features have pros and cons. Generally, the used
feature is chosen manually by the user, depending on the exact application
domain of the tracking program.
63
Figure 5.2: Example point detector
Figure 5.3: Example background modelling
Figure 5.4: Example segmentation
The first main step of image tracking is the detection of moving objects.
Mainly four different methods are used:
5.1.1 Point detectors (fig. 5.2)

Interesting points in an image are detected using brute force methods
that use the expressive texture of their locality. Most methods in some
way or another calculate the variation in image intensities in 4x4 pixel
patches. This method detects movements, but without operative rules, it
cannot determine whether or not a moving point is part of the object that
needs to be tracked.
5.1.2 Background Modelling (fig. 5.3)

By dividing the image in a stable background and a moving foreground
image, moving objects are detected using the deviation of the images
pixels from the generated stable background. The background is
generally fabricated using a learning algorithm and a part of the total
footage, where each pixel in the background image is represented by a
composition of several Gaussian colour and/or intensity distributions.
This method basically records all moving pixels in an image. However,
when the background is also moving, other tricks are necessary to detect
whether the visible movement is part of the foreground or background
(especially moving trees, unstable footage, etc.).

Furthermore the method strictly define moving objects, but moving
pixels. Another tool is necessary to recognize a group of moving pixels as
belonging to one object.
5.1.3 Segmentation (fig. 5.4)

The segmentation algorithms partition the image into perceptually similar
regions. Accordingly the sift of the segments is calculated. This method
defines regions of movement. And as such sees the different pixels
belonging to the same object. However, this method only works for one
moving object in the footage.
5.1.4 Supervised Classifiers

Using a set of examples, an algorithm can learn to detect moving objects
using a supervised learning mechanism. The learner approximates the
behaviour of a function by generating an output in the form of either a
continuous value of a class label.
5.1.5 Conclusion
In practice only one of the methods is used for pedestrian detection, being
the background modelling (Khan&Shah (2009), Velastin et al. (1994), etc.).
Via background modelling blobs/contours are constructed that indicate
pixels of the moving objects with respect to the surrounding picture. There
the foreground is a 2 dimensional binary matrix the required data storage
is very limited. Because the results are good, also this MSc. research will
use foreground modelling to detect pedestrians automatically.
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Figure 5.5: taxonomy of tracking methods according to Yilmaz et al. 2006
Table 5.1: Comparison of Point Trackers (#: number of objects, M: multiple objects, S: single object)
Table5.2: Qualitative comparison of geometric Model-Based Trackers (#: number of objects, M: multiple objects, S: single object)
5.2 Object tracking techniques

Within the field of pedestrian tracking many simple additional tools have
been used until recently to make the tracking of pedestrians easier. Caps
[Daamen&Hoogendoorn (2010), Boltes et al. (2010)], predefined small
areas of movement (Helbing et al. 2005), specialized laser equipment
(Bauer&Kitazawa 2010)] and severely contrasting background colours of
shirts, walls and floors Daamen (2010), etc. were only a few of the tools
used. The tracking of pedestrians out in the wild is a field that started
developing after 9/11. The focus research mainly lay on the detection
of maleficent and wrongful movements of pedestrians in public space.
Especially techniques that distinguish between normal movement areas
and areas where any movement of interest have been developed. Multiple
pedestrian tracking and tracing has been underexposed. But a multitude
of tracking methods has been developed. Yilmaz et al. (2006) organized
them in the taxonomy shown in figure 5.5.

Where point tracking detects objects in consecutive frames by association
of points based on the previous object state, kernel tracking tracks
them by computing the motion of the kernel in the consecutive frames.
Silhouette tracking estimates the object region and matches shapes or
contours of the objects. Because the detail in the Lowlands footage is very
limited, silhouette tracking can be ignored as a feasible tracking method.
Therefore this last method will not be further discussed.
5.2.1 Point Tracking

In point tracking the detected objects are represented by (central)
points across frames. Point trackers are suitable for tracking very small
objects which can be represented by a single point. The deterministic
point tracking methods use qualitative motion heuristics to constrain
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the correspondence problem, while probabilistic methods take the

measurements and uncertainties into account. Both methods include
operative procedures to cope with occlusions, misdetections, entries
and entries. In total there are 7 distinct point tracking methods, being
GE, MGE, GOA, MFT, Kalman, JPDAF and MHT. Yilmaz et al. (2006)
summarized the usage of the methods as follows in table 3.
For this MSc. project especially a method that can cope with multiple
objects in one frame, entries, exits and occlusion is important. It would
convenient if the method provides an optimal solution, but this is not
necessary. As such especially MGE, MFT and MHT are interesting to
explore further.
5.2.2 Kernel Tracking

A kernel is a polynomial shape boundary that is defined by an area of
pixels based on the visual features described above. The objects motion
is normally computed based on parametric motion or a dense flow field.
In the first method the objects can be tracked individually or jointly.
In the individual category generally a template of the tracked image is
matched across frames. The similarity between an object model and the
hypothesized position is computed and evaluated. The form and location
of the first occurrence of the template are indicated by hand. Also mixture
models or colour histograms can be used to define the kernel. The
second method defines a flow vector of each pixel under brightness and
consistency constraints. Accordingly the translation of the object based
on the flow vector is just a simple calculation.

67
In the field of Kernel Tracking eight main methods are applied. Yilmaz
et al. (2006) also made a qualitative comparison of these methods, see

table 5.2. For a pedestrian tracking especially a method that copes with
multiple objects, that does not need training and copes with occlusion is
useful. This means that the Layering method and Bramble method need
to be further explored.
5.2.3 Practical experience

The practical tracking work with respect to pedestrians can be divided
along two lines. The former using pattern classification techniques to
detect individuals, while tracking is done by means of Kalman filters,
velocity vectors found via optical flow calculation or particle filtering. The
latter uses a Bayesian tracking approach in which an object model with
an associated observation density function which is used to derive the
posterior probability density of the individual moving.
Figure 5.6: Visualization Kalman filter
Among the first line are several scientists that use background subtraction
in combination with Kalman filters to track pedestrians in consecutive
images. A Kalman filter uses a predefined dynamics model, known
control inputs to the system and the measurements/data gathered from
the system to form an prediction of the true value within the system
(Wikipedia A. (2011)). Most Kalman filters in pedestrian tracking assume
that a person doesnt alter its current movement direction and velocity
drastically. Whereby an initial velocity estimation of 0 m/s is used when
a pedestrian is first detected. See figure 5.6 for a visual explanation. The
more information the Kalman filter uses, the more reliable the results
become. In general the combination of the background method with a
Kalman filter works reasonably well for individual moving objects in a
still background. But for instance Stauffer & Grimson (2002) found that
this method cannot track two individuals walking in contact in the same
direction. By hanging the camera vertically above a crowd, this problem
becomes less of a problem (Yue et al. 2007). However, these models

keep having difficulty with scenes with a high occurrence of objects that
visually overlap, such as high-density pedestrian areas.
The optical flow method is another major method along the first line used
often to track pedestrians. This method copes very well with occlusion of
pedestrians for extended periods of time. Because the method records
flow directions, it can log a supposed position of the lost pedestrian
until it reappears again. The implementation differs between scientists.
Ihaddadene and Djeraba use solely an online optical flow technique to
detect abnormalities in pedestrian flows (Ihaddadene 2008). Kratz and
Nishino show that this method can also track pedestrians in extremely
crowded scenes (Kratz et al. 2009). Ali and Shah (Ali 2008) use a probabilistic
off-line approach where the motion of a pedestrian is predicted based on
an optical flow field in combination with an adapted version of the social
force method. Individuals are assumed to be subject to local and global
forces that are a function of the layout and locomotive behaviour of other
individuals. Especially the second form of usage is very interesting.
Munder (2008) is an example of the second line of research. They applied a
Bayesian framework based on particle filtering to achieve integrated object
detection and tracking. And tried to gain robustness by using multiple visual
cues and their tight integration. In a Bayesian framework Bayes theorem
is used to update degrees of belief that are based on the knowledge
currently existing within the model about the system (Wikipedia 2011,
B). Thereby this framework is adapting the likelihood of movement based
on the evidence that presents itself. Munder et al. uses shape, texture
and depth. Shape in the form of an outlines of the moving object, texture
in the employment of a pattern classifier for distinguishing between
object and background regions after the image patch was normalized
for shape, and depth by using three-dimensional object kinematics.
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However, several distinct mixture models using a Bayesian framework

have been presented over time. Next to particle filtering, several other
ways of tracking have also been proposed, such as annealed particle
filtering (Deutscher 2005), Kalman filtering (Spengler 2003) and mixture
particle filtering (Okuma 2003), but also Dynamic programming and data
association (Wu 2006). The particle filtering techniques among these last
techniques largely correspond with Munder et al. (2008) technique. The
last two techniques mainly apply mathematical programming techniques
to find the optimal set of displacements between two images based on a
multitude of characteristics. The result in the last group are equal to the
results in the first group, but their implementation far harder. Therefore a
method from the first group is chosen.
From the above it can be concluded that a combination of background
modelling and optical flow provide the best results. Therefore these will
be used in the remainder of this thesis.
69
5.3 Direct estimation

characteristics
of
macroscopic
flow
When analyzing traffic movements, flow characteristics are used to

determine trends. In the case of pedestrian movement the same
parameters can be used. In the following paragraph the literature on the
calculation of pedestrian flow characteristic parameters will be discussed
in the following order: density, velocity, acceleration, and intensity.
5.3.1 Density
Pedestrian density estimation has evolved in two distinct directions.
The scientist along the first direction wanted to estimate the number of
pedestrians solely based on the image information. For instance (Khan
2009), who have shown how crowd densities can be estimated from
digitised aerial photographs by measuring the number of edge pixels in the
images. Also (Velastin 1994) determined two pixel-based methods, namely
thinned edges and Background removal. The first being a computationally
efficient three-pixel-neighbourhood edge detector is applied to a
single original image. The latter method is based on subtraction from a
background-only image which, ideally, identifies the pixels occupied by
moving objects/pedestrians. In both methods a relationship between
the number of pixels and the manually counted pedestrians is computed
and used to in the online density estimation. Also (Yin 1995) adopted
this second method. Both Kalman filtering and geometric correction are
necessary for these methods to work properly. The proposed methods
all suffer reliability when the scaling differs between locations in the
same image. Furthermore an extensive manual calibration is necessary in
order to deduce the general formula translating pixels into the number of
moving objects. Additionally this method assumes that all moving objects
are pedestrians, while at most pedestrian locations also automotive

objects pass the camera. However, there one only needs a background
calculation the calculation power necessary for these methods to work is
very limited.

The second group of scientist aim at identifying and tracking individual
pedestrians, from which crowd density and motion can be derived. Because
the tracking output determines the result of this density calculation
method, the same limitations apply. Therefore, most of these methods
tent to have a poor performance in the presence of occlusion. They also
have a higher computational burden than the direct density estimation
methods. However, when tracking has been implemented, the density
calculation itself is nothing more than a database query. Because this
MSc. thesis considers the use of trajectory data, the density calculation
will be based on the latter method of density calculation.
5.3.2 Walking velocity and Acceleration

For the determination of velocity and acceleration of moving pedestrians
the same division is present. On the one hand scientists propose methods
to deduce velocities directly from the movement between two images
using mainly optical flow techniques (Ihaddadene&Djeraba (2008)). This
method in combination with its advantages and disadvantages will later
on be further explained in chapter 7.
But on the other hand when trajectory data is available, the walking
velocity is generally taken the difference between two consecutive
5.4 Chapter Summary

detection points while (angular) acceleration is the difference between
two consecutive velocity measurements [e.g. (Daamen 2010)]. In parallel
with the density calculation, there trajectory data is available, the velocity
and acceleration will be calculated using the trajectory data.
5.3.3 Flow(Q)
Intensity calculations can also be calculated using tracking files, this
method will not be further discussed underneath. But when no trajectory
calculations are available a virtual gate can be used. Ishii et al. (1987)
devised a technique to measure bi-directional pedestrian flow from plain
view images. Other researchers have proposed a pixel count based method
for pedestrian flow intensity estimation (Lee, Kim & Kim 2007). The method
deduces low-level features around the virtual gate. This data is then used
to estimate the blob size passing through the gate. By counting the pixels,
the number of people passing through the gate is then estimated. The
method uses foreground segmentation, motion vector computation and
pixel normalization to prepare for the counting. Since the method does
not require top-view sequences, it does not need specific camera settings
and can be used in conjunction with existing CCTV systems.
But even though the method showed desirable results in test data, it
was also revealed that the method cannot deal with heavy occlusion.
Therefore also flow will be estimated using the trajectory data.
The tracking of pedestrians consists of three parts: detection, tracking

and movement analysis.
Object detection is based on the interplay of four characteristics;
colour, edges, optical flow and texture. After a short discussion on point
detectors, background modelling and supervised classifiers it was found
that especially background modelling is used in practice due to its easy
implementation and usage.
In the review of object tracking techniques point tracking and kernel
tracking were discussed. Also several mathematical procedures such as
Kalman filters and optical flow were reviewed. It was concluded that
due to the limited amount of data on each pedestrian tracking could
be best done using point tracking with help of a optical flow estimation
method.
The last paragraph of this chapter discussed the calculation of macroscopic
flow parameters based on footage. Several methods passed the review.
It was however concluded that because trajectory data will be available
in this project, the best way forward would be to use the trajectory data
as a source of the macroscopic flow calculations. Using the formulas
proposed in chapter 4.
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Part C: Software Development

The second part of this MSc. thesis proposes data analysis software based on object tracking and automated
detection methods. The first chapter (Ch. 6) analyses the footage. In the second chapter the criteria for
the analysis software is specified. Chapter 7 discusses all steps in the development phase of the analysis
software. The fourth chapter (Ch 8.) validates the softwares usefulness.
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Figure C.1: Hadj
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Figure 6.1: Lowlands footage - total shot
chapter 6: Quick-scan footage

In the footage analysis the required functionality of the software
is discussed. In order to do so an initial analysis of the footage is
presented, in which the predominant focus will be on the characteristics
of the footage that influence the development of the software. For an
in-depth analysis of the pedestrian movements visible in the footage
one is referred to chapter 10. After a global analysis of the footage, this
chapter will propose a List of software Requirements.
6.1 Initial analysis footage

The footage consists of eight image sequences, six of which (00001, 00003,
00004, 00006, 00007 and 00008) are +/- 9 minutes and two (00002,
00006) are shorter (+/- 5 min). The footage features the pedestrian crowd
movements at the festival Lowlands. Figure 6.1 displays one of the frames
featuring pedestrian movements.
The footage is influenced by three main factors, being the recording
technique, movement of the recorded subject and the light exposure of
the subject (see figure 6.2). Each of the three can be subdivided into the
specific characteristics of each factor that influence the output of the
recording. The influence of each characteristic is discussed in further detail
in the rest of this chapter. Concluding remarks about each characteristic
are placed directly after their discussion.
Figure 6.2: Footage analysis model
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Figure 6.3: Camera suspension
Figure 6.4: UAV mounted with camera
Figure 6.5: Calibration shot
6.2 Recording technique

The lowlands footage is recorded using a Leica high speed high resolution
camera with a F 3.45 41.4 35mm Leica Lens. Figure 6.3 and 6.4 display
the camera suspension and UAV. The camera contains a wide angle lens,
therefore there is a relative big distortion on the edges of the images. See
figure 6.5 for the calibration shot.
The separate PNG images of the footage have a resolution of 1080x1900
pixels. The image recording speed is 50i, which means that the camera
records 50 half images per second. Because the camera records the images
in two parts by recording two half images (the recording consists of two
sub-fields taken in sequence, each sequentially scanning at odd and even
lines) the final output is 25 reconstructed frames per second.

Due to the method of recording using a UAV, interlacing is visible when
the subject of the recording moves to fast through the image. In these
sequences, especially when the UAV moves at reasonably high velocities,
such as in figure 6.6, this happens. However, in the parts of the footage
were the UAV is kept stable at one position, the influence of interlacing is
limited with respect to the subject. Still the stabilization software needs to
be equipped to not increase the interlacing of the images while stabilizing
the footage.
The footage is shot under an angle of approximately 49 degrees (the exact
angle is unknown, but is estimated using stabilization software). Which
means that the even though the recorded image is square-shaped, the
actual recorded area has the form of a trapezium. Due to this angle, objects
at the front of the trapezium are displayed bigger than objects at the back
of the trapezium, see fig. 6.7. To restore the original image, the analysis
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Figure 6.6: Interlacing images
Figure 6.7: Helicopter view camera bias
software needs to be able to recreate the actual trapezium shape. But

more importantly, it needs to be able to account for the size differences
between objects at the front and object at the back of the recorded
area.

Because the camera is mounted to a helicopter the raw footage is not
entirely recorded from the same stable position due to wind and rotor
vibrations. The vibrations are small but cause interlacing, because of
the high movement velocities of the vibrations. The movements cause
fairly big shifts in the recorded image, causing little parts of the recorded
image to temporarily disappear. Both big movement and small vibration
are clearly present within the footage. Both work in 6 directions, being
rotation around the x-, y-, and z-axis and translation in the x, y and z
direction. The GPS system of the helicopter was not exact enough to
record these movements. Therefore stabilization software is needed that
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does not need the exact displacements in order to stabilize the footage.
Figure 6.8: Image from first data recording sequence, approximately 4:42 p.m.
Figure 6.10: Pedestrian movement area
Figure 6.11: Image from last data recording sequence approximately 8:19 p.m.
Figure 6.11: Pedestrian movement area
6.3 Light exposure issues

The footage is shot between 4:42 p.m. and 8:19 p.m. During the data
collection the sun was on its way back down. This means that the
spectral power of the sun decreases as the distance between the sun and
the recorded subject is increasing. As described in the literature review,
both spectral power and the surface reflection properties of the object
influence the exact recorded colour of the object. Due to sundown the
recorded images get more grey influences in their colour scheme. Figure
6.8 displays an image from the first recording sequence, while figure
6.9 displays an image from the last recording sequence. A substantially
different colour distribution is visible.
distinction between individuals wearing clothing with the same surface

reflection is harder than between individuals all wearing clothing with
a different surface reflection values. Especially individuals and objects
with the same surface colour as the immediate background are hard
to detect and track. The analysis software needs to be able to use the
differences in surface reflection in order to establish differences between
people moving within the same moving object (blob). Additionally the
analysis software also needs to be equipped to record slight differences
between the background and a moving individual wearing clothing with
approximately the same surface reflection.
Clouds are a second manner in which the spectral power of the sun
decreases. During the data collection a slight haze was continually present.
As such, lightning shifts due to clouding are not visible within the footage.
Because the haze decreased the spectral power of the sun slightly, also no
cast shadows of pedestrians were visible. The differences in light intensity
cause that all image within a sequence cannot be compared based on the
same background image. As such at least one background image needs to
be established for each sequence. And because sundown has a fairly big
effects on the light intensity, the generation of a dynamic background is
necessary.
6.4 Movement of subjects in the footage
Light exposure of the camera is also influenced by the surface reflection

of the recorded objects. In figures 6.10 and 6.11 individuals and objects
with light surface colours are clearly visible and recognizable. Partly due
to the contrast with respect to the grey background, but also because
their surface reflection is higher. Individuals with a far lower or far higher
surface reflection than their surrounding are easy to detect. However, the
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Figure 6.13 depicts the layout of the visible terrain. The green and yellow
areas are respectively grassy sitting/listening areas and sanitary units or
food courts. The red areas are the pedestrian movement area. In this
area the pedestrians move from the green and yellow areas through the
red areas to the main tent or exits. The pedestrian movement area, the
pedestrian area itself is max. 35 meters wide, and about 150 meters long.
A single pixel in the images is +/- 10 cm by 10 cm, depending on the image
sequence. Due to the relatively small dimensions of a singular pedestrian
there is only limited information available on each pedestrian. Figure 6.13
is a zoomed in part of figures 6.8, which display two images of the same
sequence recorded 15 frames apart. The two red boxes in figure 6.11,
show the cut-out areas shown in figure 6.12. At this level of detail, it is
clearly visible that the footage has been shot under an angle, because the
sides of the pedestrians are visible. Each pedestrian occupies on average
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10 x 20 pixels. The singular pedestrians are mainly distinguishable through
Figure 6.12: Layout terrain - pedestrian areas
Figure 6.13: Singular pedestrians in picture.

top left t=2005,mid right t=2010, bottom left t=2015
the colours of their clothing and their distinguishable ellipsoid shapes.

Between the 3 images shot in the same second, only slight movement
is visible. As such using only 1 out of 10 images still gives enough detail
to track the pedestrians across the screen. However, the more detailed
the description needs to be, the more images of a sequence need to be
incorporated into the detection and tracking.
The movements of the pedestrians are very diverse in both x and y
direction. There is no standardized flow through the view window, such as
at a marathon. This forces the movement prediction filter to focus on the
movement characteristics of each singular detected individual, instead
of macroscopic (50x50 pixels) velocity characteristics. The detection
of velocity or pixel characteristics are a necessary requirement for the
analysis software. Besides that, the velocity also changes a lot between
frames at the same location. Which means that calculating one velocity
vector field will not give enough information. Therefore the software
needs to be able to calculate the velocity of at least the pedestrians in
every consecutive frame.

The footage displays a huge range of densities, not only throughout the
image sequence, but also between several spots within the same image.
Figure 6.14 displays an image where the concert was still ongoing. The
densities are very low. Yet the difference in density between the four
cuts from the same image is 0.1 P./m2 in cut 4 to 1 pers./ m2 in cut 1.
Figure 6.15 displays a second situation where the concert in the ALPHA
tent has just ended. The densities suddenly increase. However, also here
the density increase is very local. The distance between cut 1 and cut 4
is approximately 60 meters. The difference in density is approximately 5
P./ m2.
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When looking at the two figures two problems become visible. First of
all, at low densities (such as in fig. 6.14) there is almost no occlusion,
except for when people travel in close-knit groups. For example, parents
with children. As such the whole individual is visible. In figure 6.15 quite
the opposite is happening. Especially in cut 1 people are standing almost
shoulder to shoulder. Every individual body is almost completely obscured
by other bodies in its surrounding. Only the head, and possibly shoulders
are visible. Therefore the area one individual occupies in number of pixels
in figure 6.14 is far smaller than in figure 6.15. This means that depending
on the density, the expected number of pixels a person occupies is actually
decreasing. This fact makes detection of the number of people based on
solely the number of moving pixels impossible.
Secondly, due to the small amount of pixels available per individual at high
densities, the exact number of individuals becomes very hard to determine.
And because the height of every pedestrian is different, the areas that
they theoretically occupy are also different. This might give complications
during the synthesis. Furthermore due to the high occlusion within the
high density regions automated detection might proof very difficult. The
software needs to be able track a pedestrian whose contour is not only
moving and changing but which might also be partly obscured.
The analysis software needs to be able to record the number of people in
one moving throng based on the number of moving pixels and based on
the exact location in the image/ the texture of the moving pixels. However,
it would even be better if the software is able to track singular individuals,
there a trajectory file would solve all density calculation problems at once.
The program does not need to be able do detect the whole individual,
only register that a moving object is a pedestrian.
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Figure 6.14: Footage 05, t=2.18, densities lowlands
Figure 6.15: Footage 07, t=2.26, densities lowlands
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List of Requirements
Essential requirements
Desired functionalities
6.5 List of Requirements Software

The list of Requirements is based on both the objectives of this project and
in the last paragraph concluded necessary functionality. Lots of software
requirements have been posed in the previous chapters and paragraphs,
all of which have been brought together in a list of requirements.
In the literature review of Part B it was found that pedestrian movement can
be specified on a macroscopic level the movement by the characteristics
density, velocity and flow. In the data analysis software the objective is to
find only the macroscopic characteristic parameters. And link those with
the occurrence of self-organising movement regimes.
The last division in the list of requirements is based on who posed each
requirement:
based on experience ( )
conclusion of the literature review ( )
conclusion from footage analysis ( )
the client/TU Delft (
)
Those will only be displayed for the required list of requirements, there
they are deemed less important for the desired functionalities. The
requirements can be found on the left page.
The list is split between the necessary functionalities and the desired
functionality of the analysis software. The list can also be split between
the functionalities wanted because of the following data analysis (DA)
and the functionalities wanted because of the usability of the software by
me (UM) and by other users (UO). Both symbols will be displayed behind
each of the requirements. The distinction is made to indicate the relative
strength of each requirement.
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6.6 Chapter summary

In this chapter the characteristics of the footage have been discussed
based on a footage analysis model. The conclusions were as follows.
Movement
Interlacing and image scaling & rotations is visible due to UAV vibration and camera movement
The footage is deformed as it has been recorded under an angle
Light exposure
The brightness of the image colours is diminishing throughout the
image sequences
Clouds do not influence the footage
Recorded subject
Individual pedestrians are represented by 10X15 pixels
Occlusion of pedestrians present
Movement between consecutive images very small
Flow characteristics
Movements very diverse in velocity and direction
Huge range of densities present within the sequences
A list of all software requirements was posed. A difference was made
between the required and desired functionality. Below only the required
functionality is displayed.
The symbols display the requirement owner (DA Data Analysis, UM
Usability Me, UO Usability Other users) and why the requirement are
posed ( - Me, - Literature review, -footage analysis, -client/TU delft ).
Figure 7.1:Flow diagram ImageTracker
chapter 7: software synthesis

The following chapter reviews the analysis software developed specially
for the purpose of analyzing the Lowlands footage. The chapter is divided
into the four transition steps that transform the footage into data. The first
step (video to image sequence) will start this chapter with a discussion
of the frame cutting software and the stabilization, lens calibration and
geo-referencing software. The second step (image to precalculating
sequence) will continue the discussion with an elaboration of the
velocity deduction process and the background subtraction process. The
third step in the process (precalculation sequence to tracked object) will
review the MODT-tool. A software program newly developed to track
individuals across an image sequence. The last step (tracked object to
data) will elaborate on the functionality built into the MODT-tool to
analyze the characteristics of the detected and tracked pedestrians. The
last part of this chapter will discuss the layout of the total necessary
software package and the graphical interface of the MODT-tool.
7.1 Video to RAW image sequence

The input of the total process is an .mts file is a high-definition MPEG
transport stream video format that supports 720p and 1-9-i video formats
(FileInfo 2011) . This commonly called Advanced Video Coding High
Definition (AVCHD) format is transformed into image sequences using
a software program called VirtualDub. VirtualDub is a video processing
utility of 32- and 64-bit Windows platforms streamlined for fast linear
operations on video. VirtualDub does not allow footage editing, but has
the strong batch-processing capabilities that are necessary to convert the
.mts file. The result of this first image processing step is eight sequences
of 10 - 13 thousand images of 1 to 4 Mb per image. The png-images are
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only cuts of the .mts movie and have the same defects w.r.t. stabilization,
lens calibration, etc.
7.2 Stabilization, orthorectification and

lens calibration
The starting point of all the transformations is the RAW .mts files recorded
at Lowlands. For the stabilization of the image sequences an on the TU
Delft developed software package is used. Image Tracker can correct lens
distortion, search for the transformation necessary to match sequential
images and apply this transformation to stabilize the image w.r.t. a
reference image.
7.2.1 Data input

The software assumes that no interlacing is present within the image files
that are read into the software program. Therefore the most interlaced
sequences are disregarded for the remainder of this thesis. The Image
Tracker can read any image file format. Next to the RAW image sequence
input, the program depends on the user to specify the lens distortion
by means of a check board image. Also colour correction is specified
via contrast and brightness adaptations. Furthermore, the rotation (in
degrees) and translation (in pixels) necessary for the geo-referencing need
to be specified. Last of all, the wedge distortion needs to be specified in
degrees in x,y, and elevation in pixels.
7.2.2 Processing steps

The image processing process is displayed in figure 7.1. The process
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Figure 7.3: Raw image footage 0002, t=2000
Figure 7.2: Orthorectification objects
Figure 7.4: Stabilized image footage 00002, t=2000
consists of three steps, being lens distortion correction, orthorectification

and radiometric correction.
During the lens distortion correction the calibration photo is analyzed by
the software. First, the corners of each square are localized. Accordingly,
making the assumption that the squares should have 90 degree angles
and equal distance sides, a translation between each raw point and its
theoretical position is made. The pixels in between the found points are
linearly interpolated in both images until there is a new location for each
pixel in the image. This transformation is afterwards applied to every
image in the raw image sequence.
During the orthorectification (Hoogendoorn 2003) the perspective
distortion, the scale and rotation of the images are adjusted such that
the objects in the image are projected at the same location as the same
objects in the reference image. For the orthorectification of the Lowlands
footage known square objects with the same height have been used to
rectify the composure of the image, see figure 7.2.
During the orthorectification the input of the user is first used to correct
the raw images with respect to the camera position (wedge, translation,
rotation). Accordingly, a second optimization algorithm is used to match
each image of the sequence onto a pre-set reference image. In this
process the objective function is the cross correlation coefficient of the
two images (raw and reference). Values between 1 (raw and reference
image match completely) and -1 (raw and reference image do not match
at all) are obtained. For the Lowlands images values ranging between
0.6 and 0.8 were reached. In each iteration a step brute-force search of
varying variables (rotation, translation in x & y, scaling and wedge in x
& y) is applied. By picking the most optimal solution in each step and
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narrowing the step size the search reaches an optimum. The calculated
rectification is accordingly applied to the raw image.

The radiometric correction of the image sequence consists of the
adaptation of brightness and contrast w.r.t. the reference image. However,
due to the stable ambient conditions, radiometric correction was not
deemed necessary for the Lowlands footage.
The last step of the process is the generation of the final stabilized image
and saving of these images into the sequence. Via the three processes
described above the raw image sequence is transformed into a stabilized
sequence with the same number of images as the raw sequence. The
output sequence also has the same extension as the input sequence.
Further explanation of the ImageTracker software can be found in a paper
by P. Knoppers (2012) .
7.2.3 Assumptions
ImageTracker assumes that the observed scene is flat, which is valid for
the pedestrian movement areas but not for the tents and objects in the
image. Therefore a stabilization error is included in the data. Especially the
curved sides of the ALPHA tent introduces this error, due to z-translations
of the UAV. These errors need to be accounted for in the analysis of the
data.
Furthermore it is assumed that the brute-force search algorithm finds the
global optimum, while brute force algorithms are quite well known for
missing or shooting over the global optimum; only finding a local optimum
instead. However, in practice this does not happen often according to P.
Knoppers.
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7.3 From RAW image sequence to

pre-processed sequence
7.2.4 Results
Figure 7.4 is the result of figure 7.3 after the stabilization process. The
size final output images depends on the alterations necessary. The red
pixels indicate the parts of the stabilized image that were not needed
during the stabilization of this particular photo. The exact used space per
stabilized image differs, due to the movements and vibrations of the UAV.
The wedge is clearly visible. The images are also especially elongated in
the y direction. Depending on the sequence, Image Tracker was more
or less able to stabilize the images. Particularly the footage recorded in
front of the ALPHA tent has only a limited amount of stable objects in
the image used as a basis. As such the line between the stable points was
kept stable, but Image Tracker was not able to also correct the rotation
of the UAV completely. For the sequences in front of the lavatories Image
Tracker gives far better results. Partly due to the fact that the raw footage
was already more stable, but also because more stable reference points
were present within the sequence. The still visible displacements in the
stabilized footage are brought back to maximum movements of 7-10
pixels in-between consecutive frames.
The movement of pedestrians found within an image sequence is now

assumed to be solely due to the spatial displacement over time by the
pedestrians. In the literature review it was found that tracing moving
objects through time is possible, if one combines two object tracking
methods. The Optical-flow method can be used to detect the movement
velocity and direction of pixels between two consecutive images in a
sequence, the background subtraction method can be used to detect
moving objects in an image. Both will be explained in the following
paragraphs.
7.3.1 Optical flow calculation

The optical flow method used in this MSc. thesis is elaborated upon in
a paper by Sun et al. (2010). In this paragraph the methods application
is summarized. The program is written with MATLAB R2008b. It uses a
classical flow formulation of Horn and Schunck (Horn 1981) combined
with an optimization and implementation technique derived by Sun et
al. (2008). Where the classic Horn and Schunck method is reasonably
successful at computing directions magnitudes, they are not reliable when
they exceed two or more pixels/frame. Yet with the adaptations proposed
by Sun et al. (e.g. new information about flow and image boundaries is
included) the method ranks at the top of the Middlebury benchmark (a
benchmark used to compare optical flow methods).
7.3.2.1 Data input
The data input of the method consists of two consecutive images. Using
a loop-function that opens two consecutive images and runs the optical
flow method and saves the output of the method again, the data memory
is kept to a minimum. The parameters of the method have been left

unchanged with respect to the initial source code provided by Sun et al.
7.3.2.1 Working of method
Sun et al. minimize the error using the following objective function:
Where u and v are respectively the horizontal and vertical components

of the optical flow field to be estimated from images I1 and I2. pDand pS are
the data and spatial penalty function and is a regularization parameter.
However, Sun et al. include an non-local optimization term that keeps the
function from over-smoothing the output vector.
If all weights are equal the solution is the median of the surrounding
pixels. In regions without boundaries this faster weighting method
could be adopted without performance loss. The motion boundaries are
detected using a Sobel edge detector. Accordingly using a dilation of the
edges with a 5x5 mask, the flow boundary regions are found. In these
regions a weighted version of w is used in a 15x15 pixels region. In the
non-boundary regions, an equal weight is used per 5x5 neighbourhood,
which computes the median of the pixels motion. As such the method
weights the neighbours adaptively in an extended image region.
region remains the same despite its position change. This assumes that
changing the distance to the light source has no effect, the object does
not rotate and there are no secondary sources of illumination. While this
is seen as unrealistic, the assumption works well in practice (Fleet 2006).
Additionally, the spatial smoothness constraint states that neighbouring
pixels generally belong to the same surface and so have a nearly identical
image motion. But for small pedestrian movements this last assumption
might not hold completely. Also under strongly fluctuating light conditions
this assumption is violated. However, since the Lowlands footage does
not experience fluctuating light conditions, and the pedestrian movement
does not significantly influence the assumption, the resulting deviation is
deemed not significant.
7.3.2.4 Data output
The data output consists of a flow-vector which describes for each pixels of
the current image, what its flow direction and velocity are with respect to
the previous image. This is saved as a -mat file of 1000x1200X2 doubles
(see fig 7.5). The final presented results in the software see figure 7.6.
7.3.2.3 Assumptions
The goal of optical flow estimation is to compute an approximation to
the motion field. Each optical flow method exploits the brightness
constancy and spatial smoothness constraints of an image (Sun 2008).
The brightness constancy constraint is derived from the observation that
surfaces usually persist over time and therefore the intensity of a small
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7.3.3 Background subtraction method
Figure 7.5: dimensions velocity matrix
Figure 7.6: Velocity vector matrix
Figure7.7: from l.t.r.t.t.b. original image, generated background, generated foreground, filled-in foreground
The detection of moving objects is done using the background subtraction

method. As mentioned before this method divides the image in a stable
background and a foreground image containing all the moving objects.
The division is based on a subtraction of the current image from the
calculated background image. Because the stabilized image sequences
have a stable/non-moving background no additional tricks are necessary
to compute the background.
7.3.3.1 Data Input
The data input consists of the total sequence of images and the required
width of the catchment area for the background calculation. The
catchment area describes the part of the total sequence of images used
in the generation of each consecutive background image.
7.3.3.2 Method
Due to the changing light intensity, it was chosen to use a dynamic
background. This means that for each time step a new background
is generated to cope with the differences in light intensity within the
sequence. The possibility of generating one background for a group of
consecutive frames has been considered. But there the computation time
of this method is fairly limited compared to the optical flow calculations,
there has been chosen to integrate the best background approximation
method. For each time step the procedure starts with the gathering of 20
images equally spread across the width of the catchment area. Accordingly
for each pixel within the background image, the median colour is decided
upon. This is done for each pixel in the final image. Accordingly the
single background image is save in a MAT-file, where the title displays
the specifics of the background image. This procedure is repeated until
background images are created for each time step in the sequence.
The foreground is accordingly determined by subtracting the calculated
background from the original image. Pixels locations that differ more than
an amount of 10 in all three primary additive colours are supposed to
be part of the foreground image. The pixel locations that belong to the
foreground of a single frame are accordingly saved in a separate MAT-file,
where the title displays the specifics of the foreground image.
7.3.3.3 Assumptions
The light conditions at Lowlands were changing throughout the afternoon
because light intensity is diminishing. Therefore the width of the catchment
area has been taken reasonably small (1000 frames/ ~ 20 seconds). This is
big enough to filter besides the moving pedestrians also most still standing
pedestrians from the image sequence. But also small enough to cope with
the velocity of the light changes. What the largest width of the catchment
area is, is not known. There the calculation velocity is only dependent
on the decision whether or not to use a dynamic/changing background,
the optimal catchment area is defined as the smallest area where the
most pedestrians are filtered from the background images. Reasoning is
that the smaller the area, the better the background adapts to the light
intensity change.
of the spectrum over colours on the outsides of the spectrum. Thereby

favouring colours with a gray-ish hue over brighter/clearer colours. But as
the differences are very minor, no additional difficulties are expected when
using the background subtraction method with a median calculation.
In the foreground generation it is assumed that an amount of 10 in all
three primary additive colours means that the pixel is part of an moving
object and as such belong in the foreground image. This choice is made
based on a test with several values [0 25, steps of 2]. 10 was found to
perform best. 8 still presented a lot of noise in the foreground image, while
12 oversimplified the foreground and completely lost some people.
7.3.3.4 Data output
The data output consists of two -mat files, where the background-file
has the same dimensions as a generic .png picture and the foreground is
a one-dimensional binary picture. See figure 7.7 for the visual results.
Furthermore, in order to calculate the background a choice was made

between two distinct calculation methods, namely whether or not to
use the median pixel colour or the most present pixel to calculate the
background. The median can be, but does not necessarily has to be the
most present pixel. Tests with the calculation velocity and results were
done. Since the differences in results are very limited and the calculation
velocity of the median method is far higher, it is decided to use the
median method. However, this method favours colours in the middle
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Legenda Flowcharts
Fig. 7.8: Flowcharts a. Manual detection
Fig. 7.9: Detection by computer
Fig. 7.10: Flowchart Tracking procedure
7.4 From pre-calculation to tracked objects

The software developed for the tracking of the pedestrians consists of
three parts. The first is the loading of all information necessary for the
detection and tracking of the pedestrians. Accordingly the pedestrians
need to be detected. Last of all, the pedestrians are tracked across the
screen in the total sequence. In the following paragraph each part of the
problem is discussed separately.
7.4.1 Loading of information

The original image sequence, the background sequence, the foreground
sequence and the velocity vector sequences need to be loaded into
the software. Each of which has been specified using indicators of each
sequence, being:

IMIN first image number in the sequence

Stepsize number of frames between the analyzed images

IMAX last image number in the sequence to be tracked

Sequence the sequence that is currently analyzed

Width width of the catchment area
The location of most files within the software program can also be
specified.

Main software folder

Input file location within main software folder
Output file location within main software folder
Function file location within main software folder
Calculation file location within main software folder
For all of these a default has been specified in the MODT-tool.
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Three tabs are used to load these pieces of information. In each of the
tabs, one has the possibility to visualize the information in order to check
their correctness.
7.4.2 Detection
The detection of moving objects (for this master thesis it is assumed that
all moving objects are pedestrians) in a sequence is possible in two ways.
Either via manual detection or by using an automated procedure that
detects a major part of the moving objects within a pre-specified image.
Both procedures are visualized in figure 7.9.
7.4.2.1 Input
The input of the manual detection consists of only the stabilized image.
For the computer detection also the foreground images are loaded into
the function.
7.4.2.2 Method
During the manual detection the user will be asked to indicate the
approximated position of a not-yet-selected pedestrian within the
stabilized images of the current time step. Accordingly an enlarged version
of the indicated location will present itself, also in this image the user
is prompted to select the location of the same pedestrian. This location
is logged as the current location of that pedestrian in the picture. Also
the colour of the selected pixel is recorded. This is necessary to improve
tracking.

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The automated detection procedure uses the assumption that all moving
Figure 7.11: Flowchart detection and tracking tab
objects are pedestrians. As such it can be assumed that all foreground

pixels are part of a moving object. By recording the contour of each blob
of foreground pixels all moving objects are recorded. But as can be seen
in figure 7.9 the foreground contours can be very irregular. Furthermore
they can represent more or less than a total pedestrian. Therefore it is
assumed that a blob of less than 4 pixels in width and 8 in height does
not represent a pedestrian but noise. For blobs that are bigger than
one pedestrian no special reservations have been made. One will need
to manually detect all others in the group anyway, so only 1 pedestrian
in the group is selected. An automatic detection of pedestrian groups
with high levels of occlusion would need to be considered when further
developing this software tool. However for now, this is deemed too much
work. The pedestrians are recorded with the same information as in the
manual detection method.

The automated detection will, depending on the density, detect more (less
crowded circumstances) or less (very crowded circumstances) pedestrians.
The manual detection allows the user to select the pedestrians that the
software could not automatically detect, because of too much occlusion,
interference or not enough difference with respect to the background.
Furthermore the detection can be run more than once a sequence, as
to allow the user to detect pedestrians at certain time intervals. In doing
so it might occur that a pedestrian is detected more than ones. But this
problem is easily solved by other functions within the software.
7.4.2.3 Output
The output of both methods is the same. For each detected pedestrian
the tracking file records the current time step, the identification number
of the pedestrian, its current location in pixels coordinates and the tracked
pixel colour in RGB.
4.3 Tracking
The tracking procedure is visualized in figure 7.10. For each tracking
iteration the whole procedure is run. The software program knows three
different methods of calculating trajectories.
1 - NEXT the procedure runs once in a forward direction
2 - PREVIOUS - the procedure runs once in backward direction
3 - TOTAL the procedure iteratively runs forward from the first time
step through all time steps. Accordingly the method runs backward
through all time steps from the last image to the beginning only
updating the tracking file where necessary. Thereby after 1 total run
all detected pedestrians are tracked through all uploaded frames, even
though they might not have been detected in the first image where
they enter the detection area.
is not found due to occlusion or rapid changing pixel colour. Rapid changing
pixel colours cannot be followed since this would allow the software to
shift focus too easily. But occlusion generally occurs only for short periods
of time (2 - 3 seconds) in the footage. By allowing the software program
to lose a pedestrian and tracking its predicted location based on the last
known velocity, the software has the possibility to find the pedestrian
again when it reappears after the occlusion. When the pedestrian has not
been found for longer than two seconds, the pedestrian is accounted for
as lost. A disadvantage of the tracking of predicted locations is the risk of
mismatching reappearing pedestrians. However, unless pedestrians wear
shirts with almost the same colour, the tracking method can distinguish
between pedestrians.
7.4.3.1 Input
The input of this method is the tracking file developed during the detection
phase.
7.4.3.3 Output
The only output of the tracking procedure is an updated tracking file.
Depending on the method used (NEXT, PREVIOUS or TOTAL) the tracking
file contains only the extra tracking information of the next time step, or
the tracking information of all currently detected pedestrians throughout
the whole sequence.
7.4.3.2 Method
During the tracking procedure pedestrians are tracked based on their
current position, the colour mixture of the pixel, the velocity vector at
their current position and the foreground image. In the procedure the new
location is first predicted based on an addition of their current position and
the specified velocity vector field. In the second step, the actual location
is found by means of a local search (within a 20x20 pixel region) for the
approximate correlating pixel colour nearest to the predicted location.
Thereby assuming that the indicated colour of the pedestrian is unique
within the local search area. When a pedestrian is found, its new location
is saved in the tracking file. However, it is also possible that the pedestrian
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7.5 Altering detection & tracking input

The detection and tracking tab in the MODT-tool has no set order of
controls. However, the order of usage of the functions will influence the
data output and the speed at which it is found. In figure 7.11 one of the
suggested flowcharts of the Detection & Tracking tab is visualized. As
specified before, tracking will only occur for those pedestrians who are
already detected. However, the software has the ability to switch back
and forth between detection and tracking, one is not forced to select all
pedestrians before continuing to the tracking procedure. Thereby allowing
step-by-step tracking.
Figure 7.12: Legend macroscopic velocity diagram
Besides detection and tracking, two extra functions have been added to
help the interaction between software and use. Where DELETE deletes
the total trajectory of a specified pedestrian, SHIFT allows the user to shift
the focus of the software on the pedestrian. Thereby the user is able to
select another point on the pedestrians body that might allow for more
stable tracking results.
Figure 7.13: Example macroscopic velocity plot
Figure 7.14: example microscopic velocity plot
7.6 From tracked object to data
7.13 serves as an example.
A completed tracking file can tell the user for every image in the sequence
where the tracked pedestrians are. In order to better understand the
implications of the tracking file, also visual data analysis is necessary.
The Analysis tab provides this option. In the Analysis tab several plots
can be made, namely: macroscopic velocity plots, microscopic velocity
plots, density plots, intensity graphs, flow characteristic scatter plots and
trajectory visualizations. Next to plots this tab also provides the user with
an option to make a movie of the velocity and density plots. Last of all,
the analysis tab offers the possibility to save the density, intensity and
trajectory information in an excel file for further analysis. The functions
behind the plots will be touched upon based on their data input, method
used, assumptions made and data output.
7.6.1 Macroscopic velocity calculation

The macroscopic velocity plot shows the predominant velocities based on
Helbings method and the found trajectories. The brightness of the colour
indicates the velocity range, while the colour indicates the direction of the
walking direction (0, 90, 180 and 270). Inspired by the work of Nishikado
et al. (2009) the legend belonging with the function is visualized in figure
7.12. The calculation uses the results of the trajectories. For the area
where pedestrians might be found the macroscopic velocity calculation
displays the found flow vectors. This method shows the overall movement
of pixels in the image. But there not all pixels represent pedestrian
movement, this method can give an distorted view on individual pedestrian
movements. However, due to the smoothing Helbing et al.s method, this
graphic displays the overall trends - predominant movement velocities
and directions - fairly well. The data output consists of the original RAWimages with projected upon it the found optical flow velocities. Figure
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7.6.2 Microscopic velocity calculation

In the microscopic velocity calculation the same trajectories serves as
input. However, not the velocity of individual pedestrians is logged using
the knowledge about their current location. This function also assumes
that the velocity calculation method represents the actual velocity of the
pedestrians fairly well.
The output of this method is the photo of the current frame overlaid with
the velocity vectors found at locations where pedestrians were detected.
Displaying each pedestrian as a dot, with a vector extending from it. The
length of the vector displays the velocity of the movement while the
direction of movement is visualized by the direction of movement. An
example output is displayed underneath in figure 7.14.
7.6.3 Macroscopic Density calculation

Besides walking velocities also the density of pedestrians at the festival
represents valuable information. There are as seen in the literature review,
several different ways to calculate the density of a group people. There
has been chosen not to use the Voronoi diagram method. Furthermore
also a density calculation based on the location of each pedestrian with
respect to the individual will not be used because the method would
give no information at all locations within the image. Besides that, this
method would is very sensitive to the number and location of pedestrians
included. The question who to include and who to leave out would be
very influential on the results. Therefore there has been chosen to use an
integral approach using Helbing et al.s calculation method. Accordingly
the number of pedestrians multiplied by the influence thereby calculating 99
a density. This method might misrepresent the density of pedestrian

groups on the border between boxes. However, the error is deemed small
enough not to distort the results of the calculations too much. The data
output of this method consists of an image displaying the current frame
overlaid with the results of the density calculations. Darker and more
intense colours represent higher densities, while lighter and transparent
colour represent low velocities. At places where the densities is very low,
no colouring will be visible. Figure 7.15 displays an example of the density
calculation output.
7.6.4 Flow calculation

Figure 7.15: Example density plot
Figure 7.16: Explanation intensity calculation
Intensity is generally calculated by simply calculating the number of

pedestrians crossing a coordinate-line in a certain direction. However,
because the intensity of pedestrian flow varies greatly over a cross-section,
the necessity arose to be able to calculate the intensity at pre-specified
sections of the image. Therefore a function was developed that is able
to find out which pedestrians cross a line specified by their two outer
coordinates (x1,y1) & (x2,y2). Figure 7.16 displays the problem in more
detail. Pedestrians 1,2 & 3 all cross a line specified by the coordinates.
However, only 2 and 3 need to be accounted when calculating the intensity
at the line. The method first finds the pedestrians that are crossing the line
somewhere in the image. Accordingly all pedestrians that cross the line
outside the y-coordinates of the line are deleted. Afterwards the direction
of movement is deducted from the velocity information that the tracking
file has about the pedestrians. As such knowing the angle of the line and
the direction of movement all pedestrians crossing the line, the flow
intensity at the a pre-specified line can be calculated in two directions.
The input of this method consists of the tracking file. At the start of the
function the user is prompted to select the lines at which the intensity
needs to be calculated. Calculation of the flow starts automatically when

the user indicates that all lines have been selected.
Therefore the user is able to specify the data collection locations. In total
9 per scatter plot.
The output of the calculation consists of bar plots for each of the specified
lines. Also a Excel-file can be exported which for every line gives the number
of pedestrians who crossed the line in each of the two directions.
The software will accordingly find the data necessary from the velocity
vector matrices and the trajectory file. The same assumptions about the
density and velocity calculations apply as mentioned before. The velocity
calculation is based on the weighted average of the individual velocities
of pedestrians within a 20 pixel radius.
7.6.5 Trajectory calculation

The trajectory calculation tool lets the user plot the trajectories of
predefined pedestrians. There each pedestrian has a number in the
tracking file. This function is able to plot the trajectory of every person
on the image.
The data input consists of the most recent tracking file (which is
automatically opened by the computer). When executing this function
the user is immediately prompted to indicate which pedestrians it wants
to plot. To keep the code simple the user specifies the first and last
pedestrian trajectory the user wants to see, the function can only plot
consecutive numbered pedestrians. Subsequently, for each pedestrian
the total trajectory within the image is plotted.
In the plotting process the user is able to declare which detection points
it wants to plot within one graph. Three combinations can be plotted,
namely: velocity against density, velocity against time and density against
time. The software will produce graphs in which every detection point has
its own identifiable colour.
The output consists of an image with coloured lines indicating individual

trajectories. The plot shows the predominant movements on the screen.
7.6.6 Scatter plot calculation

Next to all the visual analysis also quantitative analysis are necessary.
By means of several scatter plots also the relationship between the flow
characteristics can be researched. Specific locations within the Lowlands
area might prove to have a different relationships between velocity, density
and intensity depending on the formation of the pedestrian movement.
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Figure 7.18: Initialization tab
Figure 7.19: Vector analysis tab
Figure 7.17: Flowchart final software package structure
Figure 7.20: Background & foreground tab
7.7 Final software package
Figure 7.21: Detection and tracking tab
Figure 7.22: Calibration tab
In figure 7.17 the flowchart of the total software framework is shown.

The red striped outlined boxes are separate software programs that need
to be run to convert the RAW image sequence into analyzed data. Image
Tracker and the Optical Flow method are software programs developed
by a third party. The background creation, Foreground subtraction and
the MODT-tool have been developed within this MSc. thesis. The main
functions have been elaborated upon earlier on in this chapter. The layout
of the MODT-tool will be further reviewed underneath. The software
consists of six tabs, being: initialization, vector, background, detection &
tracking, calibration and results.
The general layout of the tabs are visualized in figures 7.18 - 7.23. The
MODT-tool has a Graphic User Interface built within the Matlab GUIdevelopment environment. This tool creates a basic Java interface, which
provides the end-user of the program with an easier access to the software
without the need to understand and/or work directly in the command
line interface/ source code.
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Figure 7.23: Pedestrian movement analysis tab
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7.8 Chapter summary

Figure 7.17 shows the total software package needed to transform a
RAW .mts file into analyzed data. To do so, the software cuts the footage
into image sequences using the open source program Virtualdub. The
by the TU Delft developed ImageTracker is used to stabilize the images,
fix the lens distortion and radiometric correction. In pre-processing the
velocity vector matrices are retrieved using an Optical Flow method
proposed by Sun et al. Also a dynamic background and foreground are
subtracted.
The MODT-tool combines the stabilized image sequences and the
velocity matrices and the fore- & background images. The tool is able
to detect pedestrians based on computational contour analysis of
the foreground image, or manually specified by the user The tracking
procedure afterwards tracks pedestrians based on their current position,
the colour mixture of the current indicated pixel, the velocity vector at
their current location and the foreground image. The method uses a
prediction in combination with a local search method based on location
and colour.
The characteristics of the pedestrian movements can be analyzed
using the plot and save functionalities of the MODT-tool. The following
information can be retrieved from the footage:
Figure 7.24: Union Station - New York (source: www.flickr.com)
Macroscopic velocity plots and movies

Microscopic velocity plots and movies
Density plots and movies
Trajectory plots
Intensity plots and excel files
Scatter plots (v k, v t, k-t) & excel files
chapter 8: software evaluation

The usefulness of the developed software will be evaluated based on
three criteria. In chapter 6 a list of required functionalities was defined. In
the first subparagraph of the software evaluation the list of requirements
is reviewed. Besides functionality also usability, calculation velocity,
robustness and efficiency are important. The second part of this chapter
will discuss the usability using a real-life test subject, the calculation
velocity of the five pieces of software which together transform the video
into analyzed data. Also the robustness with respect to erroneous input
was checked. There the results calculated by this package represent the
most important part of this software package, the precision of the results
is also reviewed in the last sub chapter. The chapter will be concluded
with an overall evaluation of the software package.
8.1 Review List of Requirements

The functionality of the software will be reviewed using the previously set
List of Requirements. Each requirement will be reviewed separately.
8.1.1 Required Requirements

Data analysis related
1.
It reports sequences of stabilized, geo-referenced images
The image tracker used cannot restore de-interlaced images. However,
the software program is able to fix lens distortion. It can also recreate the
actual shape of the recorded image, however, it cannot recreate the actual
top view image one would like to have. But the size and proportions of
the big objects within the image are restored. Furthermore the vibrations
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are stabilized completely. However, very big camera movements (rotation

of more than 5 degrees or linear movement of more than a meter) are
still present in the data. Therefore only the parts of the sequences where
the helicopter is hovering can be stabilized completely. Yet, the stabilized
frames still account for at least 80% of the total recorded raw footage.
Which is more than enough for the analyses that are deemed necessary.
Therefore this requirement is still considered met.
2.
It reports macroscopic velocities per grid cell in x,y,u,v which can
be both viewed in vector graphs as in moving colour footage
The Optical flow method is able to estimate the movements of individual
pixels between two consecutive images. Using the calibration, the resulting
vector matrices can be translated into absolute velocities. Furthermore, a
method was found to translate the found vector matrices into colour coded
images where velocity is represented both by amplitude and direction of
movement. This requirement is completely fulfilled.
3.
It reports Densities in number of people per m2 which is reported
in a moving colour footage and in a histogram per image
Using the developed background and foreground function, the RAW
images can be split into a not moving/changing background and an
foreground displaying all moving objects in the RAW image. Accordingly
using detection, the number of pedestrians occupying a grid cell are found.
These densities can be translated into colour coded images. The value of
translating the densities into a histogram has been questioned. Instead
the scatter plot function has been further developed. But on the whole,
the top requirement has been fulfilled. Yet using a different method than
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the previously thought up solution. This is due the developments within
the detection and tracking function than were initially not expected to be
possible.
4.
It reports a combination of velocities & densities
At the location of the detection points velocities and densities can be
combined and plotted using a scatter plot. This requirement is deemed
fulfilled.
5.
It reports a combination of velocities, densities and forms of

self-organisation
At the location of the detection points, velocities and densities can be
combined and plotted using a scatter plot. This same output is also
recorded and exported to excel. In that case also the timeframe of
each data row (velocity & density) is recorded. Thereby 5.a. is fulfilled.
However it does not provide a tool to automatically attach the forms of
self-organisation to this same graph. But combining the file created at the
detection points with the by the user recorded forms of self-organisation,
5.b. can still be very easily be plotted using Matlab. For now requirement
5 is deemed half-fulfilled. But as the requirement was mainly listed to
simplify the data analysis, the failure to meet this requirement, does not
represent the failure of the software overall. But is deemed an alley for
further improvement in the future.
Software related
6.
New by me written code has clear and open structure of

underlying parts
The newly developed source code is written in a function structure.
Each function has a self-explaining text at the start of the document.
Also the connection between functions is highlighted. Furthermore the
computation steps are also highlighted. This requirement is fulfilled.
7.
New by me written code has a explicit and understandable

code
As far as I can deduce this is true. Therefore this requirement is checked.
8.
The input of the analysis software is an MTS-file
The input of the ImageTracker is a sequence of. png images. Which would
mean this requirement has not been achieved. But an extra piece of open
source software called VirtualDub can be used to cut the .MTS video into
the separate .png images.
9.
The output file is constructed by the user itself from several

different plots and tables stored in multiple directories
In the previous chapter several plot and export possibilities have been
shown. The user specifies where the files are saved, so the possibility
of storing the information is multiple directories is also possible. This
requirement is met.
Calculation speed related

10.
The software gives output in a reasonable amount of time

(3 days 72 hours)
The MODT-tool generally gives output within minutes after a command
has been given. The software programs necessary to generate the input
of the MODT-tool take much longer to generate all the output. This is
very much depended on the number of frames within a sequence, and
computational power available. The calculation speed will be further
elaborated upon in the next sub chapter.
Precision related
8.1.2 Desired functionality
11.
The error on the velocity is no more than 10% of the calculated

velocities
This requirement is very hard to test, there no measurements were done
at ground level within the crowd. Therefore the requirement is said to be
unknown.
12.
The error on the densities is no more than 10% on the

calculated densities
In the hand checks done, the calculated densities are right. However,
not everyone can be detected due to occlusion. At those instances there
are no other means to test want did happen at the ground. So no final
conclusion can be drawn about this requirement.
Usability related
13.
The software can be operated by me
There I developed major parts of the total software package and worked a
lot with the others, it can be concluded that this requirement was met.
14.
The software is robust
This requirement will be further discussed later on in this chapter.
15.
The software is stable
This requirement will be further discussed later on in this chapter.
Data analysis related

15.
It detects individual pedestrian locations (x,y) in each image,

but not necessary across a sequence (either by hand

or computer)
The MODT-tool is able to detect individual pedestrians both manual
and automatically. The automatic detection detects +/- 80% of the
pedestrians without difficulty based on their distinction with respect to
the background. This requirement is met.
16.
It reports individual velocity characterization in each image
Using the tracking file in combination with the optical flow calculations
also individual velocity characterizations are recorded. Which can be
visualized as an image or exported as part of the tracking file.
17.
It traces individual pedestrians throughout a sequence
Based on a first detection by hand or computer, the MODT-tool can track
the location of individual pedestrians throughout an image sequence. A
simple Markov is implemented to cope with short-term partial or totally
occluded pedestrians.
18.
Reporting of the Lateral and frontal spacing with respect to

other pedestrians
The software does not include a tool that reports the spacing. However,
there all pedestrian movements are recorded in the tracking file, an easy
implementable MATLAB script can be written to get a hold of these data.
For now this function has not been included in the tool yet.
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19.
Reporting of the Angular deviation with respect to local

destination
The software does not yet include this functionality. But similar to 18 an
easily implementable MATLAB script can be written to find this data.
Software code related

20.
The software is one complete piece of code that can be run by

pressing Enter
All developed software-pieces can be run by pressing Enter. For the MODTtool, this however means that the user-interface is started.
21.
The software can be operated by more people than just me
As long as the user is able to operate Matlab all the software parts can
be operated. The MODT-tool has an intuitive control and does not need
specialist knowledge to be operated.
22.
The parameters of the software can be edited
Most software parameters within the MODT-tool can be edited while
running the program. The parameters of the other programs can be edited
at the beginning of each function. The requirement is fulfilled.
23.
The output file is constructed by a piece of software
The outputs can be constructed with the MODT-tool. So this requirement
is met.
24.
The structure of the output file can be edited before running

the software
The output can be edited while running the MODT-tool, so it does not
need to be edited beforehand.

25.
The software gives output within a day (24 hours)
This requirement has not been met, see comments at requirement 11.
26.
The software gives feedback on the computation speed and

computation progress
This requirement has not been met. No provisions have been made.
Calculation precision related

27.
The error on the velocity is no more than 5% of the calculated

velocities
28.
The error on the densities is no more than 5% on the calculated

densities
8.2 Usability
8.3 Calculation speed
A user-test has been done with a test subject who was unaware of the
function and layout of the MODT-tool. Based on the user test it was
determined that the layout of the program still has a lot of room to
improve. Especially the buttons need more explanatory information in
order for the user to understand the underlying functions. This has partly
been fixed based on the remarks made during the test. Further necessary
actions were deemed to laborious for the extra usability. However, they
might need to be included in a further evolved version of the MODTtool. Next to the button explanation also the text-boxes needed more
information on the usage of them. These problems have hopefully been
solved.
As mentioned before the total software package consists of five separate

pieces of software, all with a distinct function. In figure 8.1 the calculation
speeds of the software programs are shown.
The functionality of the program was considered good. Two functions

were still considered missing, but both have been implemented after the
user-study. The fact that all forms of data analysis can be done in the
same program which makes switching between different analyses very
easy. Only two errors were encountered during the test that lead to the
breakdown of the MODT-tool. In both cases the data necessary for the
program could not be loaded there it was not available. This error cannot
be solved using this software, because the real flaw in within the MATLAB
programming language. There is no command which can check whether a
certain files and folders present within the windows structure.
Overall the user-experience was deemed fairly well, especially considering
that the actual user of the program has far more knowledge about
the functioning of the program due to a detailed description of the
functionality and layout of the program.
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The time indications are based on the calculation on one personal

desktop computer (4 GB RAM, CPU 2.13 GHz). It can be seen that the preprocessing of the footage and the preparatory calculations of the speed
vector matrices, background and foreground images take the most time.
The actual detection and tracking only takes one day. The data analysis
afterwards has no set time period because the user has the ability to come
back to this part of the program at any given point in time. It can be seen
that the speed of the total footage analysis is predominantly determined
by the pre-processing steps. By reducing the calculation times within this
region the overall calculation times go down. However, the background
and foreground software are already running as efficient as possible.
So for these two, only an increase in computational power will lead to
a reduction of calculation times. There, the optical flow method has not
been developed within this master thesis and the code is opaque, it is
very hard to estimate the effectiveness of the calculations. Therefore it is
not known how much time gain is possible within this procedure.
Another way to decrease the calculation time would be to entirely get
rid of one of the procedures. The background and foreground are of
vital importance within the program and cannot be replaced by a more
simplified estimation. Yet the optical flow method can actually be replaced
by a far simpler estimation for special image sequences where the moving
object is more than 20x20 pixels in size. A Kalman filter can predict the
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new location of a pedestrian as long as it has enough information to start
Figure 8.1: : Calculation time software program
the trace. For an image sequence filming people walking across a station
floor, this method works fine and does take considerable less computation
time. However, for the Lowlands footage the sequence gives not enough
information per pedestrians to start the trace.
8.4 Robustness w.r.t. erroneous input

All input fields have been secured for erroneous input. Which means that
only numeric input is accepted. When a field is left empty, the text box
will automatically ask for input before actually running the function the
user wanted to use.
8.5 Conclusion
Combining all evaluations before it can be concluded that the software
package is functioning better than expected. The required functionality
within requirements has been fully met. Besides that also the list of
desired requirements has been almost completely met. The user-test
left some room for improvement. But considering that the actual user
has far more knowledge about the functionality than the test-subject,
the user-experience was deemed sufficient. For now the calculation time
cannot be decreased, but more research is needed into the preprocessing
and preparatory calculation. The robustness w.r.t. erroneous input was
deemed good. Therefore it is concluded that the software package is
ready for usage.
8.6 Chapter Summary

The evaluation of the software is based on three criteria, namely:
functionality, calculation speed and robustness. Underneath a summary
of the results is given:
Evaluation functionality: ( requirement met, x requirement NOT

met, ? not able to determine)
data analysis related
1. It reports sequences of stabilized, geo-referenced images
2. It reports macroscopic velocities per grid cell in x,y,u,v which can be
both viewed in vector graphs
3. It reports Densities in number of people per m2 which is reported in
a moving colour footage and in a histogram per image
4. It reports A combination of velocities & densities
5. It reports a combination of velocities, densities and forms of selforganization
Software code related
6. New by me written code has clear and open structure of underlying
parts
7. New by me written code has a explicit and understandable code
8. The input of the analysis software is an MTS-file x /
9. The output file is constructed by the user itself from several different
plots and tables stored in multiple directories
10. The software gives output in a reasonable amount of time (3 days
72 hours) x /
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Calculation precision related

11. The error on the velocity is no more than 10% of the calculated
velocities ?
12. The error on the densities is no more than 10% on the calculated
densities ?
Usability related
13. The software can be operated by me
14. The software is robust
15. The software is stable ?
Usability:
After a few alterations, especially in the layout of the software program,
the MODT-tool is deemed fit for its intended use. More alterations can
be made, these however were not seen as cost-effective adaptations for
the time being.
Calculation speed:
The calculation speed for an image sequence of 10.000 frames with a step
size of 10 using a personal desktop computer is on average 23 days. The
calculation time can be reduced by either increasing the computational
power available or by increasing the effectiveness of the optical flow
calculation.
Robustness w.r.t. erroneous input

The MODT-tool has been checked with respect to erroneous input. The
user gets a message when wrong input is detected.
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Part D: Theory Development

The fourth part of this MSc. thesis presents the analysis of the self-organising pedestrian movements found
at Lowlands 2011. Chapter 9 discusses the adaptations in the analysis software. The subsequent chapter
elaborates on the actual pedestrian movements seen at Lowlands. Chapter 11 proposes a crowd movement
transition theory after a review of the underlying dependencies. The last chapter ends this MSc. thesis with
an evaluation of the sensitivity of the results and discusses angles for further research.
113
Figure D.1: Festival Isle of Wright (source: www.flickr.com)
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Graph 9.1: Fundamental diagram sequence 5
Graph 9.2: Fundamental diagram sequence 7
Graph 9.3: Fundamental diagram indicating pedestrian behavior
Figure 9.1: Rotation plane around XY-axis
Ch. 9: analysis of Software results

A first glance at the data provided by the MODT-tool provided insights
into the data analysis capabilities and flaws still present within the
software. In this chapter the required adaptations of the calculation
software are defined based on the general tendencies found in first
footage analysis results. In following paragraphs the factors that influence
the results are reviewed. Paragraphs 9.2 9.4 respectively elaborate
on the influence of non-stable footage (9.2), the slight changes in pixel
colour (9.3) and the density of the crowd (9.4). Afterwards in paragraph
9.5 the necessary adaptations of velocity calculation are discussed.
Subsequently paragraph 9.6 reviews the implemented Kalman filter. The
last paragraph will discuss the changes made to the data and depiction
of the fundamental diagram to lessen the scatter.
9.1 General tendencies data analysis

A first glance at the data provided by the MODT-tool provided very
interesting insights into the inconsistencies still present within the data
analysis software. When plotting the first fundamental diagram a cloud of
scatter was present that could not be explained from pedestrian behavior,
see graphs 9.1 and 9.2.
During the analysis of the scatter present at the bottom part of the
velocity-density graph (k<0.5 N/m2, v<0.5 m/s) it was found that these
points represented stationary pedestrians, see graph 9.3. However, for
these stationary pedestrians walking velocities up to 0.4 m/s were found.
In following analyses it was found that this error originated from the
combined influence of several factors, being non-stable footage, slight
changes in pixel colour and detection problems due to the density of
the crowd. All three will be shortly discussed in the following paragraphs
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before the solutions to the problem are further elaborated upon.
9.2 Stable footage

The movements visible within the footage during the flight were largely
removed during the stabilization phase. However, slight movement is still
present within the stabilized footage. The footage moves a little up-&down and left-to-right. However, the predominantly visible movement is
a rotation around the XY-axis (fig. 9.1).
Due to the movement the image does not only move, but also transforms
along the XY-axis. The rotation results in a smaller representation of
the one side of the plane and a larger representation of the other side,
causing a misrepresentation of pixel velocities calculated by the optical
flow method. The rotation around the XY axis (figure 9.1) has a very large
influence on the objective function of the minimization scheme used in
the calculation of the optical flow. Therefore the optical flow does not
provide a trustworthy estimate of the pedestrian movement, weakening
the basis of the proposed tracking method in the MODT tool. However,
in the direction of movement of pedestrians are still depicted correctly.
Therefore the directional information from the optical flow method can
be used.
The image transformation also causes the trajectories found to deform.
Where movements in the top-left corner magnified, movements in
the bottom-right corner diminishes at the same moment. Thus using a
velocity calculation in which trajectories are used might proof less reliable
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than expected.
Figure 9.3: Example velocity averaging
9.3 Pixel colour issues

Next to stabilization issues, the change of the pixel colour due to slight
light changes, slight movement of the upper body, occlusion, etc. also
influences the tracking method and as such the data analysis results. In
the tracking method colour has been used as the main characteristic to
pinpoint the location of each pedestrian. However, the pixel colours of
pixels describing the same person in two consecutive frames might vary
slightly due to slight instability of the footage, minor differences in the
light intensity or shadows on the persons clothes. Thus, even though the
same person is tracked, the exact movement of the pedestrian that the
software records might be off because another pixel on the pedestrians
body has a better colour value. An error in the trajectory is introduced
that also influences the walking velocity calculations.
Figure 9.2: Dense crowd image
9.4 Density issues

Dense crowds cause two problems that the MODT-tool finds difficult to
tackle. First of all, automatic detection becomes impossible, because most
foreground blobs consist of more than one pedestrian. In these situations
manual detection still provides a (laborious) solution.
In dense situations also the risk of two pedestrians with similar t-shirt
colours being present within close proximity of each other increases
greatly. At such a moment the tracking method might confuse the two
locations of the pedestrians and switch trajectory.
9.5 Velocity calculation

From paragraphs 9.2 and 9.3 it can be concluded that the found
inconsistencies in the velocity calculation are due to misrepresentations
of the pedestrians trajectories. These minor representations only have
a limited influence on the density calculation. But the instantaneous
absolute velocity (eq. 9.1) calculation is severely influenced, rendering very
unstable estimations of the magnitude of the instantaneous velocity.

(9.1)
Both the magnitude and direction of the velocity vectors are fluctuating
a lot. Most of the errors introduced by the changing pixel colours and
the tracking can be reduced by averaging the instantaneous velocity
vectors over a certain time period. However, the errors introduced by the
instability in the footage and tracking will always misrepresent stationary
pedestrians. Another way of calculating the velocity vector is:

(9.2)
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This second method decreases the error introduced by instabilities in the

footage. See for instance the example presented in figure 9.3. The first
method (eq. 9.1) would render the velocity of this stationary pedestrian
(2 2 +2+2+1)/4=1.95, while the second (eq. 9.2) would result in |(0,0)(0,3)|/4=0.75.
Using the second method the influence of all three errors decreases for
both walking and stationary pedestrians. Depending on the length of
the time interval between the two locations the average velocity more
resembles the instantaneous velocity or more resembles the average
pedestrian behaviour. Since this thesis researches the relation between
the macroscopic flow parameters and the self-organisation behaviour,
small changes in walking velocity and experienced density need to be
picked up. Therefore, the time period in the calculation has been chosen
long enough to dampen out most of the walking velocity calculation error,
and short enough to depicts the instantaneous behaviour. A relatively
short period of 100 frames (4 seconds) was chosen.
9.6 Kalman filter

To reduce the risk of the tracking method switches trajectories, more
information about the pedestrians previous movements needs to be
implemented into the tracking method. A Kalman filter provides this
option. The implemented filter uses the movement information of the
pedestrian of the last 50 frames, where the last previous movements
have more influence than the first (50 frames before). For every time step
the filter updates the information. Figure 9.4 on the next page shows the
exact working of the implemented Kalman filter. See paragraph 5.2.2 in
the literature review for a further explanation of the workings of a Kalman
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filter.
Symbols Kalman filter:

t = time
j = time step
w = applied weight function
vj = the velocity of an individual in time step j
Xj = the location of an individual in time step j
xt = x-coordinate of the location
yt = y-coordinate of the location
C = the pixel colour
Figure 9.4: Kalman filter implemented in MODT-tool tracking procedure
Graph 9.4: Fundamental diagram without adaptations
Graph 9.5: Fundamental diagram without influence still standing pedestrians
9.8 Chapter summary
Graph 9.4 presents a fundamental diagram of selected pedestrians in both

sequences 5 and 7 whose behaviours are completely known. It can be seen
that a clear gap is visible between the two sorts of behavior, i.e. stationary
vs. walking. Because the fundamental diagram displays both behaviours it
becomes clouded. Because no walking pedestrians are encountered with
a velocity less than 0.3 m/s it is reasonably safe to exclude all points with
a walking velocity lower than 0.3 m/s. The adapted fundamental diagram
is shown in graph 9.5.
In this chapter the adaptations necessary to the MODT-tool based on

analysis of the footage w.r.t. pedestrian movement were discussed.
The adaptations to the velocity calculation, the tracking method and the
fundamental diagram are used during all hereafter displayed results.
It was found that errors were introduced by:

visually present movements of the camera in the stabilized footage
slight changes in pixel colour between consecutive frames
manual detection in the high density regions
It is proposed to reduce the error in the velocity calculation of +/- 0.4 m/s
by implementing another walking velocity calculation strategy.

instead of
Also a Kalman filter has been introduced, which increases the certainty
of tracking the right pedestrian by adding information to the tracking
procedure.
Last of all, the data going into the depiction of the fundamental diagram
has been filtered to exclude stationary pedestrians. 0.3 m/s has been used
as a cutoff value.
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Graph 10.1: Velocity distribution per density class
Figure 10.1: Origin/destination locations pedestrians within footage
Figure 10.2: Trajectories sequence 5, t=5000
Chapter 10: Pedestrian crowd movement analysis

Chapter 10 discusses the pedestrian crowd movement behaviour
found at Lowlands 2011. The chapter starts with a discussion of the
general tendencies of the pedestrian movement. Accordingly the crowd
behaviour is analyzed based on the macroscopic characteristics walking
velocity, density and flow. Afterwards the self-organising behaviour is
described more extensively. The chapter ends with a proposition on
how to estimate self-organisation. The comparison of the different
macroscopic parameters of the pedestrian movement with respect to
the self-organisation characteristics can be found in chapter 11.
10.1 General tendencies

The pedestrians at the experiment location come from different origins
and go to different destinations. In total eight origin/destination locations
can be recognized. Figure 10.1 displays all of them.
10.2 Movement related issues

The pedestrian movements have been analyzed for three of the in total
eight footage sequences, namely sequences 5, 7 and 8.
In sequence 5 the pedestrians move in almost straight lines. Any deviations
of trajectories from the mainly east-west directionality indicate a difference
in origin and/or destination relative to that of other pedestrians. This
indicates that actual free flow is possible. The visible velocities range
between 0.3 and 1.2 m/s (see graph 10.2). This is significantly lower
than was expected based on previous empirical research described in the
state of the art. However, taking in mind that this data set is collected at
a festival terrain, the lower velocities can also be explained by the natural
tendency of people to walk slower when they have no direct goal in mind
(given the fact that the footage was taken during a performance).
The predominant OD-pairs originate or end at either the ALPHA side exit,
the CHARLIE exit, the toilet entrances or the Hemelbrug exit. Therefore
the walking direction in the footage is mainly east-west or visa versa.
A set of transcribed trajectories of sequence 5 shows the same trend (fig.
10.2). Besides the generally parallel movement a few pedestrians deviate
through the crowd in a downward movement. The red trajectories in
figure 10.2 also indicate that these turning movement proceeds via a
stair-like motion.
Graph 10.2: Histogram velocities sequence 5
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121
Graph 10.3: Histogram velocities sequences 7

Figure 10.3: Trajectories sequence 8, t=5400-5500
Figure 10.4: Trajectories sequence 7, t=5200-5300
Graph 10.4: Histogram velocities sequences 8
In sequences 7 & 8 however, where densities in the intermediate

areas are far higher, the pedestrian trajectories show more deviations
with respect to their destination. It was estimated that the OD-matrix
for sequences 5, 7 & 8 is on average the same. The absolute numbers
differ due to the difference in the number of pedestrians present within
the footage. Trajectories in sequences 7 & 8 are not straight anymore,
indicating the presence of hampered walking conditions (fig. 10.3 & fig
10.4). The walking velocities decrease in those areas, but not to the same
extent within the whole area. Especially at places with higher densities,
velocities decrease to a greater extent. In between the cash register and
the toilets, higher walking velocities are observed. Often even higher than
in the free flow conditions of sequence 5. On average, walking velocities
ranging between 0.4 and 1.8 m/s are seen (graph 10.3 & graph 10.4). It is
hypothesized that contrary to sequence 5, the pedestrians in sequences
7 & 8 display goal-oriented behavior. This would explain the increased
walking velocities found in both sequences.
Pedestrians in all footage sequences move in groups. Almost no people

are found walking through the experiment area alone. Groups generally
consist of 2 6 people. Figures 10.5 and 10.6 respectively show the
location and the absence of pedestrians within a frame of sequence
5. A clear presence of empty bubbles is visible. The shape and size of
the bubbles dynamically change over time. However, the crossing of a
bubble by a singular person is almost never encountered. Therefore it
is hypothesized that in all density regimes, leader-follower behavior and
movement in groups is present.
Table 10.1: Gaussian estimations of velocity distributions
sequence 5
sequence 7
sequence 8
Mean (confidence interval)

0.55 (0.53 - 0.57)
0.84 (0.82 - 0.86)
0.85 (0.83 - 0.87)
Std (confidence interval)

0.20 (0.17 - 0.22)
0.29 (0.27 - 0.31)
0.23 (0.21 - 0.25)
Figure 10.5: Indication of zones with pedestrians
In table 10.1 Gaussian estimations of all the velocity distributions are

presented. The means of sequences 7 & 8 are both significantly higher
than the mean of 5, while their standard deviations are on average equal.
This can be an indication that two different behavioural profiles are visible
at the Lowlands grounds.
Figure 10.6: Indication of zones without pedestrians
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123
Graph 10.5: Histogram experienced densities sequence 5
Graph 10.7: Histogram experienced densities sequences 8

t=320.4 sec
t=400.4 sec
t=560.4 sec
Graph 10.6: Histogram experienced densities sequences 7
Figure 10.7 : Moving high density regions sequence 5 t=320.4 s, 400.4 s, 560.4 s
10.3 Density related issues

At the experiment area densities range from 0 2.5 P/m2 in sequence 5
(graph 10.4) to 0.5 4 P/m2 in sequences 7 & 8 (graph 10.5). In sequences
7 and 8 fast high density regions are visible (graphs 10.6 & 10.7). However,
low density regions also remain present, though these regions are smaller
and fewer in number.
An estimation of the Gaussian distribution (table 10.1) for each of the
histograms displays the same trend. The mean of the distribution of
sequences 7 & 8 are significantly higher than the mean of the density of
sequence 5. Furthermore in sequences 7 and 8 higher standard deviations
are found. This shows that even though the average density is higher, lower
densities are still encountered in the analysis area during the recordings.
10.10 the locations where the high density regions are generally found
during the recordings are shown (i.e. the area in front of the cash registers
and the area in front of the toilet entrances). The increased densities
at those locations are caused by the hampering of free flow by groups
of waiting pedestrians. At the same time the movement of the passing
pedestrians shows more search-like behavior. The direction of movement
changes more often and the average walking velocity goes down. Also the
variation in walking velocity increases.
Table 10.1: Gaussian estimations of density distributions
sequence 5
sequence 7
sequence 8
Mean (confidence interval)

0.77 (0.66 - 0.88)
1.48 (1.45 - 1.51)
1.30 (1.25- 1.35)
Std (confidence interval)

0.44 (0.32 - 0.55)
0.62 (0.59 - 0.65)
0.54 (0.49 - 0.59)
Density changes at Lowlands have a distinguishable time component.

When comparing the three screenshots of sequence 7 (figure 10.7), high
density regions can be distinguished at different locations. These high
density regions move with the flow. Where at the beginning of sequence
7 most pedestrians are located near the ALPHA tent, the high density area
is found near the toilet waiting area at the end of the sequence.
Both sequence 7 and 8 show mid and higher density movements. In figure
D.Duives
Figure 10.10: High density area - underlying image sequence 5
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Graph 10.8: Fundamental diagrams sequence 5

Parallel to the density and velocity histograms, a difference in behaviour
of pedestrians between the three data sets (sequences 5, 7 and 8) is also
present in the fundamental diagrams. In all four graphs the blue dots
display the calculated macroscopic flow characteristics during each of the
sequences. The red dots indicate the medium value of each of the density
regimes.
When looking at the density-velocity graphs of both sequence 5 and
sequence 7 (graphs 10.8 & 10.9), it becomes visible that indeed different
behaviour is seen (instead of a calibration flaw). For sequence 5 it is seen
that at low densities (where unconstrained movements are possible) the
walking velocity is far lower than for sequences 7 and 8 (graph 10.10). For
higher densities the walking velocities of pedestrians in sequences 5 and
7 are on average equal. However, because two different sorts of walking
behaviour are plotted in the same fundamental diagram displaying the
results of both series is distorted (graph 10.11). In order to be able to
look strictly at goal-oriented walking movements it is hypothesized that
the results of sequence 5 and 7 cannot be used in accordance. In both
sequences 7 and 8 the pedestrian behaviour in the video shows more goaloriented behavior, due to the moment at which the video is recorded (just
after the ending of a concert). Since sequences 7 and 8 also better represent
the theoretic fundamental diagram found in literature, it is assumed that
sequences 7 and 8 represents goal-oriented behaviour better. Therefore
only sequences 7 and 8 is used in the remaining analysis.
Graph 10.11: Fundamental diagrams sequence 5,7&8
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127
Figure 10.11: Macroscopic velocity analysis sequence 5, t=5010
Figure 10.12: Macroscopic walking direction analysis sequence 7, t=6010
10.5 Self-organising behaviour
10.6 Self-organising estimation scheme
At Lowlands mainly three forms of self-organisation were visible.
All three forms of self-organisation are expected to have different

characteristic parameters. Because the footage mainly displays laneformation, the focus in this thesis is on the analysis of the lane-forming
movements. In order to describe the lane formation the characteristics
of the lanes need to be recorded. From the literature review it can be
concluded that two characteristics might be important in the quantitative
description of lane formation, being

The number of lanes

The average width of each lane
Since there has only been a limited quantitative description of lane
formation, the definition of both characteristics is unclear. Therefore the
following paragraph proposes a definition for each of the characteristics
mentioned above.
No organisation /disorder
First of all, the total lack of organisation, which is especially visible in
sequence 5, see fig 10.11. During these periods, every pedestrian moves
where and when he/she wants. Trajectories are almost straight lines and
the variance of the walking velocities of each individual are limited.
Lane-formation
The second form of self-organisation encountered in series 7 and 8 is
the formation of lanes, see fig. 10.12 for a representation of walking
directions. In both sequences the number and the width of the lanes
change dynamically over time and location.
Stop&go
The last form of self-organisation encountered only in a few small
episodes of sequence 7, is the existence of stop&go movements. During
this moments the flow of people temporarily slows down, only to speed
up again afterward for no apparent reason. The stop&go movement is
only present in the top-left corner of the screen. A visual representation
is hard to deduce because pedestrians within this very dense region are
hard to track.
Number of lanes
In the past there has been tried to describe lane formation by means
of counting the number of walking lanes that do appear. In this study a
lane has been defined as a flow of pedestrians all walking in the same
direction, walking directly next to each other. The magnitude walking
velocity of the pedestrians can be equal, but might also be variable within
a lane. However, the number of lanes also depends on the width available
for the total pedestrian bidirectional flow. Therefore the number of lanes
is defined as the number of lanes per total effective width (the passage
width available at the experiment locations at Lowlands 2011)
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D.Duives
Graph 10.12: Histogram width of lanes
Graph 10.13: Histogram number of lanes
Width of each lane

Pedestrians are particles. Therefore the border between two flow
directions is hard to establish. So how to define the width if one does not
know how to define the borders of each of the pedestrian streams? A way
of defining borders is by using the macroscopic velocity calculation method
proposed by Helbing et al. (2007). This method calculates the direction
of the velocity at any given point in the field based on the velocity of
surrounding pedestrians. Thereby automatically borders between zones
are indicated at locations where the velocity vector changes direction. By
plotting the direction of the velocity vector in a colour graph the lanes
become visible. This method clearly shows the presence of lanes in high
density regions (see fig. 10.12 & 10.13).
Graph 10.14: Scatterplot number of lanes vs. width of lanes
However, in low density regions and at the borders of the passage, this
method also fails to produce a border. Therefore it is assumed that
pedestrians in the middle of the passage consider their local route based
on the forces that are present in their environment and choose the route
of the least resistance. At the border of a lane in the middle of the passage
would mean that the force working on both sides of the pedestrian is
equal. The assumption that this thesis makes, is that the person at the
rim of the passage has the choice to move away from the crowd, but
chooses not to deviate because the force that person experiences from
the side where nobody is walking is non-existent. The assumption is that
this person at the rim, at the border of the last lane, does not experience
any pressure to move away from the crowd, while at the same time he
has the ability to do so at whim. Thereby his own trajectory represents
the exact location of the outer border of the outer lane. It is expected that
this method introduces some random error. However any other way of
estimating the outer borders would probably introduce a larger error.
Coupling the characteristics
The lane-formation characteristics need to be related to the macroscopic
flow parameters as experienced by the pedestrians. Therefore the laneformation characteristics are deduced for every pedestrian detected
in the footage. With a small program both width and the number of
lanes, at the cross-section where the pedestrian is standing, are determined. Thereby the instantaneous macroscopic flow parameters can be
coupled to the exact lane-formation characteristics present at the same
cross-section.
10. 7 Self-organising movements

As mentioned before, lane-formation is the form of self-organisation
most seen at the Lowlands festival. For four time periods of sequence 7
and three time periods of sequence 8 the self-organising movements of
every individual are scored based on the number of lanes present at the
cross-section and the width of a lane. Since almost all lanes were directed
east-west, using the cross-section of the passageway does not introduce
problems. The two histograms on the left page (graphs 10.12 & 10.13)
respectively display a frequency count of the number of lanes and the
width of the lane recorded for each individual. It can be seen that most
individuals experience lane formation of 3,4, and 5 lanes.
As can be expected for a passageway with a fixed width a relation between
the number of lanes and the lane width was found, see graph10.13.
However, the summation of the lanes does not add up to the full passage
width. Furthermore, enormous scatter is present in the graph. Both facts
taken together suggest that the development of lanes is a dynamic process
where lanes do not have a set width. However, graph 10.14 displays an
inverse relation where the width of the lanes decreases when the lane
width increases. Since the width of the passageway does not change a lot,
the existence of this relation is a logical result.
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D.Duives
10.7 Chapter summary

In chapter 10 the pedestrian crowd movements found at Lowlands 1011
were analyzed.
The following general characteristics were found:

Velocity
Density
Flow
Characteristic
seq. 5
0.5-1.1 m/s
0-2 P/m2
0-2.2 P/m/s
free flow
seq. 7&8
0.5-1.3 m/s
0.5 - 4 P/m2
0.25-5 /m/s
lane formation
stop&go
first proposed by Helbing et al. (2007).

For every pedestrian the two lane formation characteristics and the
by the pedestrian experienced macroscopic flow parameters are
identified.
Regression analysis equations
(11.1)
(11.2)
(11.3)
Two different forms of behaviour were found in the data (goal-oriented

vs. not goal-oriented walking behaviour). Because both sequences 7 and
8 better represent the previous empirically found fundamental diagrams
for goal-oriented pedestrian behavior, only these two sequences are
used in the remaining analyses.
In paragraph 10.5 it was deduced that the footage mainly displays three
forms of self-organisation movements. In sequence 5 predominantly the
lack of self-organisation is seen. Sequences 7 & 8 display lane formation.
Stop&go motions are also encountered briefly in the last two sequences.
However this behaviour cannot be analyzed, due to tracking problems.
Because especially lane formation is present in the footage, the focus in
the remainder of this paper is on lane formation. To describe the exact
lane formation present in the footage two characteristics are used:
* the number of lanes at a given cross-section
* the width of the lane a pedestrian is currently experiencing
Both characteristics are deduced from a macroscopic velocity calculation
(11.4)
(11.5)
(11.6)
(11.7)
(11.8)
(11.9)
(11.10)
(11.11)
(11.12)
Chapter 11: crowd movement transition theory

In chapter 11 the connection between the macroscopic flow parameters
and the self-organising movements of the pedestrian crowd is
examined. This chapter starts with an explanation of the analyses used
in the remainder of the chapter. The three consecutive paragraphs
investigate the dependence of respectively velocity (11.2), density
(11.3) & flow (11.4) on the self-organising pedestrian crowd movements
characteristics. Paragraph 11.5 of this chapter combines the results
found in the previous paragraphs and chapters in a discussion on the
relation between the macroscopic flow parameters and self-organizing
behaviour. This chapter ends with the proposition of a theory describing
the transition between self-organising pedestrian crowd movements,
proposed in paragraph 11.6. For a review of the validity of the results
and the proposed theory the reader is referred to chapter 12, where a
sensitivity analysis will further explore the uncertainty in the results.
The previous chapter has elaborated separately upon both the macroscopic
flow characteristics and the characteristics used to describe pedestrian
self-organising crowd movements. In this chapter the connection between
both groups of characteristics is examined. It is hypothesized that a relation
is found between each of the macroscopic flow characteristics and the
lane-formation characteristics. By means of three tools the dependence
of each macroscopic flow characteristic on each self-organisation
characteristic is analysed. Table 11.1 indicates which of the correlations
are researched. The numbers in the squares show in which paragraph the
results of the analysis can be found. But before progressing to the results
of the analyses, first the statistical tools are further explained.
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Table 11.1: Researched correlations
11.1 Regression Analysis
Simple linear regression is an approach used to estimate the relationship

between a scalar variable Y and one or more explanatory variables
(denoted X) (). The data is modelled using a linear function (eq. 11.1),
whose intercept (alfa) and gradient (beta) are estimated from the data.
In this case the macroscopic flow characteristics are the dependent
variables while the nr. of lanes and the width of lanes are the explanatory
variables. In the remainder of this chapter mainly simple regression with
one dependent and one explanatory variable is used (eq. 11.1). Both
gradient and intercept are calculated using equations 11.2 and 11.3.
11.1.1 Hypothesis test

Accordingly the significance of each relation is tested using a hypothesis
test (eq. 11.7-11.8). In all following analyses, the null hypothesis (eq. 11.7)
states that there is no relation between the dependent and explanatory
variables. Disproving the null hypothesis (-1.96<Tb | Tb>1.96) suggests
that there is indeed a statistically significant relation between the two
133
characteristics analyzed.
11.1.2. Correlation coefficient (PPMCC)
11.1.3. Coefficient of determination
The correlation coefficient is a measure that gives an indication of the

correlation between two variables X and Y, calculated using equation 11.
9. In the equation the covariance of the two variables is divided by the
product of their standard deviations. The resulting answer ranges from -1
(completely negatively correlated) to 1 (completely positively correlated).
A value of 0 implies that there is no linear correlation between the
variables.
The last coefficient used to analyze the relation is R2 (eq. 11.10-11.12),

also named the coefficient of determination. The variability of the data
set is measured through the difference between the total sum of squares
and the sum of squares of the residuals. This result ranges between 0 (no
correlation) to 1 (perfect correlation).
Graph 11.1: Scatterplot number of lanes vs. walking velocity
Graph 11.2: Scatterplot width of lanes vs. walking velocity
11.2 Velocity vs. self-organisation

The first of the macroscopic flow parameters to be researched is the
walking velocity with respect to both the number of lanes and the width
of the lanes at a cross-section. In graphs 11.1 and 11.2 the results are
displayed.
In these graphs it can be seen that the scatter of data points is enormous,
yet a few trends remain visible. Generally between 2 and 7 lanes form
in the passageway, which was also seen in the discussion of the laneformation. Walking velocities in each of the lanes predominantly range
between 0.5 1.6 m/s. Additionally a high occurrence of lanes between
the 4 and 10 meters in width are seen, where the velocity ranges between
0.7 and 1.25 m/s.
Using linear regression it was estimated that the average pedestrian
walking velocity increases slightly with the number of lanes formed (eq.
11.13).

v = 0.0088 * l + 0.85
(11.13)
In table 11.1 all calculated statistics of this estimated equation are given.
It can be seen that the confidence interval of (-0.002,0.017) is very large
for such a small gradient.
Also for this relation the confidence interval of (-0.0045, 0.0015) is very
large and allows for the possibility that the sign of the gradient is actually
positive. Because the number of lanes and the width of the lanes are
negatively correlated, both trends are in accordance.

Both relations are tested against the null-hypothesis that there is no
relation (gradient =0). The hypothesis test (see Tb in table 11.2) confirms
that the gradient of the found relationship between velocity and the width
of the lanes is not significantly different from 0. However, the correlation
between the walking velocity and the number of lanes is found to be
significantly different from 0. From the hypothesis test it can be deduced
that the walking velocity has an influence on lane-formation according to
the footage data.
For both relationships presented above the correlation between the
two parameters is small due to the amount of scatter in the data. The
coefficient of determination is also rather small for both correlations.
Thus a lot of variance is left unexplained by the found simple regression.
It can be concluded that the goodness of fit is very weak.
Parallel to these results, the walking velocity within each lane decreases
slightly with a growing lane width (eq. 11.14).

v = -0.0015 * w + 0.89

(11.14)
Table 11.2: Regression analysis lane-formation vs. velocity
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lanes=2
lanes=3
lanes=4
lanes=5
lanes=6
lanes=7
Graph 11.6: Histograms frequency of occurence of each density.

Graph 11.3: Histograms frequency counts density for each nr. of lanes
Graph 11.4: Scatterplot number of lanes vs. density
Graph 11.5: Scatterplot width of lanes vs. density
Table 11.3: Regression analysis number of lanes vs. the experienced density
Table 11.4: Regression analysis the experienced width of lanes vs density
11.3 Density vs. self-organisation

Graph 11.4 displays a scatterplot displaying the number of lanes present
at a cross-section with respect to the densities experienced by each
individual within one of the lanes at the same cross-section. Because both
the number of lanes and the density are discrete variables, the results are
very hard to interpreted based on just the graph. Therefore a histogram
has been made per number of lanes where the frequency of occurrence of
each density is displayed (Graph 11.4). From the histograms it is deduced
that, though the median at each density is the same, the actual frequency
counts are different.
Using linear regression (Table 11.3 and Graph 11.4) it was found that there
is a negative linear relation between the number of lanes and the density
experienced at the same cross-section (eq. 11.14).

k = 0.019 * l + 1.57
(11.14)
Because the test-statistic is negative and smaller than -1.96, it is concluded
that the found gradient of the found relation is significantly different from
0. The correlation between the parameters is very limited due to big
scatter of the data. Combining the hypothesis test and the correlation
coefficient it is concluded that the experienced density has a significant
influence on the number of lanes.

The relationship between the width of the lane and the experienced
density is plotted in graph 11.5 and displayed underneath.

k = 0.024 * w + 1.28
(11.15)
The confidence interval of is limited (table 11.4). It is furthermore found
that there is a significant positive relation between the variables. The
correlation coefficient shows that even though a lot of scatter is present,
the two variables are positively correlated. Therefore it can be concluded
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that when the experienced density within a lane increases, the width
of the lane also increases. A linear regression of the reversed relation is
represented in the graph 11.6.
The statistical test of the linear regression is positive and larger than 1.96,
so the gradient is significantly different from 0. For the density lanes (>3
pers/m2) found within the Lowlands footage, high density lanes would be
on average 4 meters wider than low density lanes (<1 P/m2).
Graph 11.6: Scatterplot density vs. width of lanes

Table 11.5: Regression analysis density vs. width of lanes
Graph 11.7: Scatterplot number of lanes vs. flow
Graph 11.8: Scatterplot width of lanes vs. flow
Table 11.6: Regression analysis the number of lanes vs. flow
Table 11.7: Regression analysis the width of lanes vs. flow
11.4 Flow vs. self-organisation

The relation between the lane-formation characteristics and the last of the
three macroscopic flow characteristics was deduced last. In graph 11.7,
table 11.6 and equation 11.16 the relationship between the experienced
flow and the number of lanes at a cross-section are presented.

q = -0.0019 * l +1.28
(11.16)
From the hypothesis test it can be deduced that the found slightly negative
gradient found in the relation between the two characteristics is not
significantly different from 0. Combining the previous with the correlation
coefficient and the coefficient of determination also give reason to believe
that there no relation between the experienced flow and the number of
lanes is present.
The last relation between the macroscopic flow parameters and the selforganisation characteristics is the relation between width of the lanes and
the experienced flow. The following relation is found:

q = 0.018 * w + 1.12
(11.17)
Graphs 11.8 and table 11.7 display the linear regression. As expected,
the found relation is a multiplication of the found relation between
respectively velocity and density and the width of the lanes.
The relation between velocity and the width of lanes was not statistically
significant due to the amount of scatter in the graphs. The dependence of
density of the width of lanes was statistically proven. The results in table
11.7 show that there is positively correlated relation between flow and
the width of the lanes. But its test-statistic has a smaller test-statistic than
table 11.4.
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D.Duives
Figure 11.1: Pressure on both sides
Figure 11.3: Unequal pressure on both sides
Figure 11.2: Pressure on one side
11.5 Discussion of the results

The results found in the previous four paragraphs suggest that the
width of self-organisation lanes is regulated via both the by pedestrians
experienced density and velocity. Trying to put the found results in
perspective with respect to pedestrian flow theory, this suggestion makes
sense. From previous research it is known that the pedestrians everyday
walking decisions are based on numerous factors. Two of which are
the attraction of the final destination and the repulsive nature of other
obstacles. This concept already provides the inner core of Helbing et al.s
(2005) Social Force model. When following this vision down the line, an
increase in the experienced density (caused by the increase of the number
of pedestrians) would result in the increase of the magnitude of repulsive
forces in the crowd. Not only in the middle of the crowd, but especially at
the rims of the lanes, these repulsive forces would result in the widening
of lanes.
See for example figures 11.1-11.3. Pedestrian A is completely surrounded
by other pedestrians. There is no way in which the repulsive forces can
be decreased, so the pedestrian follows the most direct route toward its
destination. Pedestrian B on the other hand, only experiences repulsive
forces on one side. The natural tendency of the pedestrian to sidestep and widen the lane. In the last situation pedestrian C experiences
repulsive forces on both sides, however the repulsion C experiences from
pedestrians walking in his lane are greater than from pedestrians going
the other way. Therefore also in this situation C will choose to sidestep
and widen the lane, upto the moment where the repulsive forces from
both sides are equal again. The three examples together explain the
widening of lanes when the experienced density increases.
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Parallel to the above, the results show that there is a second relation
between density and the number of lanes. Using the relation presented
above, an increase in density causes a widening of lanes. For a set passage
and very low densities every pedestrian can choose its own path. The
repulsion would force cooperation between pedestrians. In this first phase
the lack of self-organisation can also be seen as the presence of an infinite
number of lanes. With growing densities wider lanes (+/- 5 m) with a lot
of empty space in between would form, where each lane can freely grow
upto the point where the borders of the lanes meet. At the end of this
phase the number of lanes is finite and depending on the width of the
passage. From this moment in time onwards the width of each lane is
dependent on the relative excess repulsion force present in each of the
lanes with respect to the repulsion forces present in the other lanes at
the same cross-section of the passage. Lanes with excess repulsion forces
try to widen, and lanes with relatively less repulsion forces, are forcibly
narrowed.
The found results imply that the width of a lane increases with an increase
of the density within the lane. This result implies that the number of
lanes in a passage with a fixed passage width decreases when density
within all of the lanes increases. This result is quite the opposite of what
Hoogendoorn et al. (2008) found in their research. It is hypothesized that
both results do not contradict each other but only describe the same
phenomenon at different scales using different descriptive measures.
Where Hoogendoorn et al. (2008) use the number of lanes calculated by
means of an optical flow method in a constricted very small passageway
(<10 m), this MSc. thesis describes pedestrian movements by means of
141
macroscopic velocities at far larger passageway. It is hypothesized that
at higher densities the number of lanes in the lane-formation found

by Hoogendoorn et al. (2008) will also decreases. Furthermore, the
description of lane-formation used in this paper is not able to record lanes
consisting of 1 person, while Hoogendoorn et al.s method is far more
capable to record these microscopic movements.
However, it is questionable whether these one-off motions should be
considered lanes. Since both the research method and the descriptive
measures used to analyze the data differ greatly between studies, no
definite answer can be given whether the above posed hypothesis is
indeed true. Therefore it is suggested that more research using either one
of the methods with the settings of the other research needs to be done
to confirm the hypotheses.
From the results the following things can be concluded:
There is a relation between self-organisation characteristics and the
macroscopic flow characteristics
Density and the width of lanes are positively linearly correlated
Density and the number of lanes are negatively correlated
More research is needed to determine the exact relation between
walking velocity and both self-organising characteristics.
Flow and the width of lanes are positively linearly correlated
More research is needed to determine the exact relation between
flow and the number of lanes
11.6 Proposed theory

Even though most correlations between the pedestrian macroscopic flow
characteristics and the self-organisation characteristics defined above
cannot be proven with a 95% reliability due to the enormous scatter
present in the results, a theory is presented based on the few correlations
that could be proven.
The relations between flow, walking velocity and the proposed selforganisation characteristics are derivatives of the correlation between
density and lane-formation characteristics. It is proposed that laneformation is mainly regulated by the experienced density. Therefore the
proposed theory states that when density increases, the walking velocity
decreases, the width of the lanes increases and the number of lanes
decreases. Flow increases upto the capacity point, after which pedestrian
flow starts breaking down. Due to increasing repulsive forces in the crowd
the width of the lanes still increases and the number of lanes decreases
until one lane is covering the whole passage width. Figures 11.4 and 11.5
display a fundamental diagram displaying the hypothesized correlation
between pedestrian macroscopic flow characteristics and the selforganisation characteristics.
In this theory the four forms of self-organisation in bidirectional movement
are different representations of lane-formation. The first phase (lack of selforganisation) is described by a flow with an infinite number of lanes. The
second phase (lane-formation) is the existence of lanes at medium high
densities. When densities increase even more stop-and-go and turbulent
self-organisation become visible resulting from both the density within
each lane and the build up forces on the border of the lanes. Thereby this
theory unifies four forms of self-organisation.
D.Duives
Figure 11.4: Pedestrian self-organisation framework (density vs. velocity)
Figure 11.5: Pedestrian self-organisation framework (density vs. flow)
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11.8 Chapter summary

Chapter 11 analyses of possible correlations between the macroscopic
flow parameters and lane-formation. Table 11.7 displays the results of
the regression analysis
significant?
number of lanes vs. velocity
0.0088
0.85
0.10
2.01
yes
width of lanes vs. velocity
-00.15
0.89
0.10
-1.04
no
number of lanes vs. density
-0.019
1.57
0.36
-2.31
yes
width of lanes vs. density
0.024
1.28
0.35
9.16
yes
number of lanes vs. flow
-0.0019
1.28
0.44
-0.2
no
0.018
1.12
0.44
6.30
yes
width of lanes vs. flow
It was found that only the relation between the width of lanes and
respectively density and flow are positive significantly different from 0.
Also the relations between respectively velocity, density with respect to
the number of lanes were proven to be significantly other than 0.
However, even though the other correlations cannot be proven without
doubt, due to enormous scatter, it is hypothesized that these will indeed
be found to exist when better research methods are used.
In the last paragraph of this chapter a theory is proposed in which
all visible trends are taken into account. It states that when density
increases, the walking velocity decreases, the width of the lanes increase
sand the number of lanes decreases.
Figure 12.1: Koninginnedag Amsterdam Museumpark (source: Flickr)
chapter 12: Conclusion, Discussion and evaluation

The last chapter of this master thesis puts this research process in
perspective. The first paragraph opens the chapter with a review of the
research results. The chapter progresses with a discussion of the results.
In the third paragraph conclusions are drawn. The implications of the
found results are discussed in paragraph 12.4. After which the last chapter
proposes angles for further research.
12.1 Review of Results

At the beginning of this MSc. thesis a main research question and
several sub questions were posed. Not all have and/or can be answered
completely. Underneath the results related to the the research questions
are shortly discussed.
Theory
The literature review showed three things. First of all, pedestrian crowd
movement analysis is a fairly young field of study, in which not a lot is actually
known. Secondly, the field is developing quickly due to the developments
in research technology, methodology and public interest. But upto now,
the definition of the macroscopic flow parameters is ambiguous. Generic
methods, that were proven to be not totally consistent, are being used
to interpret pedestrian movement. At the level of one pedestrian these
methods provide good empirical data sets. However, what is known about
macroscopic pedestrian crowd movements is still mainly qualitative. Last
of all, the simulation models are currently not well equipped due to lack
of data necessary to calibrate and validate these models for big crowded
events.
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Equipment
This research looked at the development of a new recording and analysis
tool. The question was whether a UAV recording technique could actually
be used to gather stable and processable footage. Looking back, it can be
said that the results are astonishing. Not only can footage be recorded,
but the resulting footage is also stable enough to analyze the pedestrian
crowd movements without interference. Yet, the recorded footage
is unstable and displays longitudinal and lateral movements as well as
rotations along the XY-axis.
Software
A combination of VirtualDub and ImageTracker provides a tool to correct
the unstable distorted footage. ImageTracker is capable to solve the
distortion of the image almost completely. However, slight movement
remains visible in the stabilized data in the top-left and bottom-right
corner due to lack of stable objects in those corners. This MSc. thesis
has proven that it is possible to translate pedestrian crowd movement
footage into pedestrian movement data. However, due to the by the
camera movement introduced instabilities, uncertainties are included in
the results.
Data related
By means of the UAV recording technique and the developed software
the crowd movements at Lowlands have been analyzed. It was seen that
mainly velocities between 0 and 1.8 m/s were present. Densities range
from 0 - 4 P/m2. Besides that, only two forms of self-organisation were
analysed (no organisation and lane-formation). An in-depth analysis of
145
the correlations between the self-organisation characteristics and the
macroscopic flow parameters showed that there is indeed a relation

between the two groups of parameters. In a comparison most relations
were proven to be statistically significant.
Figure 12.2: Averaging over location.
Based on these results a theory could be proposed that describes the

relation between the macroscopic flow parameters and one of the forms
of self-organisation. This theory implies that what might have been
thought of as three distinct forms of self-organisation (no organisation,
lane-formation and stop&go) might actually be other visualizations of the
same relation. However, the transition between the four phases cannot
be determined based on the results of this MSc. project because only two
forms of self-organisation could clearly be distinguished (and only one
could be analyzed).
Main research question
From the results it is found that especially density influences the
transition(s) between self-organising crowd movements. Qualitatively
it can be said when the density increases, the width of the lanes in the
lane-formation increases and the number of lanes in the lane-formation
decreases. Quantitatively the results suggest the following:
k=0.024w+1.28
The results for all other analysed pairs of characteristics display the same
trend.
However, in the results above no transitions between the three flowregimes could be indicated. Therefore more research into pedestrian
crowd movements is needed to localize the transitions between the
regimes.
Figure 12.3: Rotation around the XY-axis
12.2 Discussion of results

During the analysis of the pedestrian crowd movements assumptions
and approximations are made. All these assumptions and approximations
adds to the uncertainty in the final results. Underneath the most severe
influences are discussed in the same order as they presented themselves
within this research. Afterwards a conclusion is drawn about the validity
of the results.
12.2.1 Stabilisation and geo-referencing of the data

The transformation of the footage started with the stabilisation and georeferencing of the images. The results of the stabilisation were promising
at first sight. Images were seemingly completely stabilized. However, at
closer investigation it was found that still minor movement was visible
between consecutive images. The movement is in the order of magnitude
3 pixels between frames. Because each image pixel represents +/- 5 cm
in reality, the total movement visible between two consecutive frames
is maximum 15 cm in reality. For the stabilisation of helicopter images,
this is not a small feat. In the literature it was found that people move on
average with a velocity of 1.2 m/s (Weidmann (1993)). Thus, the maximum
introduced error is 0.15/1.20 *100% = 12.5%. This is deemed quite large.
Because the movement error can present itself in any directions, taking
the average over a number of consecutive frames cancels out most of the
stabilisation error (see figure 12.2 for a visual representation). The person
is walking with an average velocity (black arrow), but in the recorded
footage destabilizing movements (red small arrows) are present. When
averaging the first and last location of the person the striped arrows are
the result. Most of the stabilisation error is cancelled out using a new
calculation method. Therefore this error is not seen as problematic, since
its influence on the results is limited.
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During the stabilisation not only longitudinal and lateral movement along
x- and y-axis are visible. Also a slight rotation of the image plane around
the XY-axis is seen, see figure 12.3 for a visual representation. The rotation
results in a reduced representation of world coordinates on one side of
the plane and an enlarged representation of the other side, causing a
misrepresentation of movement velocities.
The expected error on the Kalman tracking is assumed less than that of
the optical flow. However, the optical flow method does present us with
the means to estimate the movement direction of most pedestrians in
the first image of a sequence. Thereby improving the start-up period of
the implemented Kalman filter. However, as soon as more reliable data is
available the Kalman ignores the optical flow data, since the optical flow
method introduces large estimation errors. The total introduced error
due to not entirely stable footage is limited, but still accounts for a part of
the scatter in the velocity data.
12.2.2 Pre calculations

During the pre-calculation phase two methods were used. The optical flow
method and the background subtraction method. The issues surrounding
the first method has already been discussed in conjunction with the
stabilisation.
The background subtraction method is mainly used during the detection
process. For situations where most pedestrians walk alone, the calculated
foreground provides a good basis for detection. However, when lots of
people walk in a dense crowd, singular pedestrians are not visible anymore
because the blob sizes (10 60 pedestrians) increase. Another method was
therefore deemed necessary to detect each singular pedestrian in high
147
density regions. Manual tracking provides a solution. Yet, footage quality
Figure 12.4: Cut-out serie 7, t=5700
does not provide a lot of support for manual detection. People are often
occluded and have no clear outline. See fig. 12.4 for a general detection
image. Based on the t-shirt colour and the presence of black heads most
people are detected. But no 100% detection rate can be guaranteed.
The found densities in this thesis are therefore expected to be slightly
lower than the actual densities present at Lowlands, especially in dense
crowded situations (>1.5 P/m2). In high density crowds one is manually
able to detect most pedestrians, however it is estimated that one in every
15 people is not detected. Depending on the spatial distribution of those
pedestrians, the error is very limited [five pedestrians of which one is not
detected: 100-(5-1)/5*100%= 20%) or fairly big [1 P/m2 of which one is
not detected: 100-(1-1)/1*100=100%]. This might cause the fundamental
diagram to be slightly more elongated than presented at the moment.
The largest introduced errors are found on lower end of the density range.
While the smallest introduced errors are found at the higher end of the
density scales the larger errors are found at the lower end of the scale.
12.2.3 Software
The predominant approximation uncertainties made within the developed
software can be found within the tracking method and the calibration
method. Each of which is touched upon briefly.
Figure 12.5: Detection error
12.2.3.1 Tracking method

The tracking method estimates the position of each individual based on
its current location, the velocity vectors of the last five time steps and
the in the previous time step recorded colour code. Based on either the
foreground or manual detection a person has been detected. Because
the image was originally recorded under an angle, the location where the
person is detected (on the shoulder) is not the exact point of detection
on the ground, see fig. 12.5 for a visual representation of the problem. All
detected people of the same height are detected with the same detection
difference. The difference in length within the Dutch adult population with
a 95% reliability interval between the smallest women (158.6 cm) and a
tall man (194.8 cm) is 36 cm (Grandjean 1980). With a footage recording
angle of 49 degrees the maximum difference in the assumed distance
between two people and the actual distance between two people is:

(12.1)
The maximum error is quite big, but since men are generally smaller and
women longer than assumed in the calculation above, it is expected that
the average error will be 20 cm or less. The error in estimated location only
influences the density calculations. Yet it is expected that the detection
error due to a tilted capturing angle is less significant than other errors
presenting themselves in the tracking method.
In the tracking method colour is used as the final characteristic to pinpoint
the location of the pedestrian. However, the pixel colours of pixels
describing the same person in two consecutive frames might vary slightly
due to the instability of the footage, minor differences in the light intensity
or shadows on the persons clothes. Thus, even though the same person
is tracked, the exact movement of the person that the software records
might be off because a wrong pixel on the body has a better colour value.
The detection error and tracking error are related. When one shifts the
detection point on the pedestrians body, also the location (X,Y) where
the person is detected shifts due to the detection error. The tracking error
introduces variability in the detection error for each person. Thereby the
total uncertainty increases. The body of an average visitor of Lowlands
is accounted for by 10x20 pixels. Because the main movement of the
visitors is lateral through the screen, the maximum error arising due to the
shifting of detection point on the body is on average 4 pixels, which would
account for a tracking error of 20 cm in world coordinates. At the same
D.Duives
time the detection error would increase with 23 cm. However, as with the
stabilization error, it is expected that the tracking error decreases when
averaging the movement of pedestrians over a longer period of time. Due
to the variability of the actual detection point, detection error will remain
present and hard to estimate. But this second uncertainty accounts for a
part of the scatter still present in the velocity data.
Besides an error in the detection part of the tracking method, the tracking
method also has a chance to lose a persons track. Especially in situations
where (moving) objects with the same surface colour are present the
tracking method gets confused. Two situations of error can be pointed
out. In first situation two persons with the same shirt colour cross at
short distances, temporary occlusion occurs. In the latter situation two
people with a similar shirt colour walk in the same direction, one in front
of the other. The tracking method skips from the first person in line to the
second when it loses track of the first. The consequence of both situations
is the same, i.e. the persons track is lost. Since the trajectories are used in
the calculations of both velocity and density two errors occur. Especially
the misrepresentation of density is seen as a major problem because
it directly influences the fundamental diagram. The density of an area
where a pedestrian is not present is overestimated due to the tracking of
a person that is not there. At the same time, the density in an area where
the pedestrian is actually present is underestimated.
Most of this kind of tracking errors have been manually detected and
removed. But a few might have escaped notice. Therefore a slight
misrepresentation of the pedestrian macroscopic flow parameters is
expected.
149
12.2.3.2 Calibration
The calibration of the macroscopic parameters is based on a correction
factor based on the x and y-coordinates in the image and the same x
and y-coordinates in reality. Because no GPS measurements were taken
during the experiment calibration was done using the building plan of
the Lowlands grounds. This method introduces two errors. The first one
is related to the dissimilarities between the building plans and reality.
Because the toilet units have standard widths and lengths no major
errors are expected to have arisen from this first uncertainty. The second
expected error is related to the indication of the locations within the
image. It was estimated that the average error on the indication of a
location is maximum 2 pixels off. On the length of a toilet building this
error would result in a error of approximately 0.002 in the y-coordinates
calibration factor. For the width that same indication error would result in
an error of 0.008 on the x-coordinates calibration factor. On themselves
these calibration errors are not expected to influence the data severely.
method does not show the real instantaneous behaviour, but dampens
the abrupt changes in velocity. Using this method diminishes the average
velocity error diminishes to 10% of the original error. However, by not
using the instantaneous walking velocity one introduces an error in the
fundamental diagram, since the densities are instantaneous. However,
since pedestrians are not expected to drastically change their velocity,
the expected error will be rather insignificant relative to the other
uncertainties.
12.2.4 Data analysis
12.2.4.3 Lane width calculation

The detection of the lane width is done manually, thereby introducing
two errors. The first is the misinterpretation of the lane width. Not at all
borders between lanes it is completely clear where the border exactly
lies. Manual interpretation is necessary, which introduces uncertainties. It
is expected that the introduced error is maximum 0.5m (10 pixels). Which
is under circumstances between 1 and 10% of the recorded lane width.
For smaller lanes the introduced error increases.
During the data analysis phase four calculations are made, each of which
introduces an error. In the remainder of this sub-paragraph the errors
introduced by the velocity calculation, flow calculation and the lane width
calculation are discussed separately.
12.2.4.1. Velocity calculation
While analyzing the trajectories, it was found that the instantaneous
velocity calculated using the tangent of the trajectory showed very
unstable behaviour (see Ch. 9 for an in-depth explanation of the problem).
Therefore there was chosen to use an approximation of velocity in which
the distance (between the location a person in one frame and the location
of the same person 100 frames later) is divided by the time period (4s). This
12.2.4.2 Flow calculation

Flow is calculated as the product of walking velocity and density. Therefore
the error introduced in the flow calculation is bigger than the multiplication
of the velocity or density errors. This explains the increased scatter in the
flow data. Due to the manner of calculating flow, the found correlation
between flow and the self-organising characteristics decreases severely
in strength.
The second introduced error is the actual manual recording. The recording
error is of the same magnitude as found during the sensitivity analysis of
the calibration process (2 pixels). This second error is insignificant with
respect to the misinterpretation error.
12.2.4.4 Number of lanes

Also the interpretation of the number of lanes is done manually, based
upon a macroscopic velocity graph. Most lanes can be easily identified
based on colour differences. However when a lot of very small lanes
are present, lanes might not be fully separated by color in the graph.
Furthermore, the number of lanes can be misinterpreted, especially at
areas with high densities. Both issues are expected to introduce severe
errors (upto 2 lanes), which accounts for a maximum error of 30 percent.
This error is expected to cause the insignificance of the correlations
between the number of lanes and the flow characteristic parameters.
12.2.5 Conclusion about included error

From the discussion above three things need to be taken away. Due to
a combination of unstable stabilized footage and several tracking errors,
uncertainties are introduced in the velocity calculation. Most of these
are hard to gauge. However, based upon the movement estimations of
stationary pedestrians the remaining uncertainty in the velocity calculation
was estimated to be +/- 0.1 m/s. For walking movements (where the
average velocity is 1.00 m/s) this uncertainty is quite high.
Additionally during the manual interpretation of the self-organisation
characteristics misinterpretation mistakes are made. Especially for the
number of lanes, the uncertainty introduces fairly big impurities in the
results. Furthermore during the manual detection of pedestrians in very
dense crowds errors are made. Both errors introduce a deformation of
the correlations found during the regression analyses. However, this
uncertainty is deemed less significant with respect to both the velocity
and self-organisation uncertainties.
D.Duives
12.3 Conclusions
This MSc. thesis has looked at three separate but connected issues; the
implementation of a new UAV recording tool, the development of footage
analysis software and the analysis of pedestrian crowd movements at
Lowlands. Conclusions have been drawn with respect to all three issues.
In the according subparagraphs the issues are treated separately.
UAV recording
It was found that even though the footage could not be stabilized
completely, the pedestrian movement could be analyzed both
qualitatively and quantitative in an offline fashion. From the result it can
be concluded that the UAV recording method can indeed be used to study
pedestrian crowd movements. Since the method captures areas with large
dimensions, this method is uniquely equipped to record pedestrian crowd
motions. However, the developed software is very sensitive to scaling and
rotations of the recorded footage. Therefore it is also concluded that the
UAV, because it vibrates, rotates and translates, is not the most stable
equipment available to record footage. But because the UAV can reach
great heights, can respond quickly to commands from the ground and has
a recording installation that is easily adaptable, it is a piece of equipment
that can certainly help improve the understanding of pedestrian crowd
movements.
Chain of software programs
The footage recorded using the UAV equipped with a HDHS camera can
currently not be stabilized entirely. Therefore, slow processes (v<1 m/s)
recorded from great heights (>50 m) proof difficult (but not impossible)
to analyze with the developed chain of software programs. It is concluded
151
that the ImageTracker is currently not precise enough to completely
stabilize the footage recorded by a UAV. However, the results showed

that the lowlands data (recorded average speeds 1 m/s from a height of
80-100 meters) could still be analyzed with a reasonable margin of error
after stabilization. The MODT tool did however show far better detection
and tracking results for processes recorded from a smaller height or
processes that used a better stabilized recording technique, both for
automatic and manual detection as well as automatic tracking[footnote].
Tracking pedestrians in unstable recordings is still possible because of
the implemented combination of optical flow, Kalman filter and local
colour search. But it is concluded that even though the MODT tool is very
sensitive to unstable footage, interlacing and occlusion, the tool functions
reasonably well for its required purpose. Combining the above, it is
concluded the current software chain (VirtualDub ImageTracker- MODT
tool) functions reasonably well when manual detection is used. However,
for automotive detection the current chain is insufficient. Based on this
MSc. thesis it can be concluded that the developed chain of software
programs provides a good basic tool for moving object (i.e. pedestrian)
analysis of footage with limited information per pedestrian, as long as the
footage is reasonably stable.
Pedestrian movement analysis
It was found that during the concert the velocity distribution at Lowlands
had a lower mean than after the concert was finished. A similar trend was
visible in the density distributions. From both the velocity and the density
distributions it can be concluded that two separate forms of walking
behavior were seen.
From the results analyses results it can also be concluded that density
plays an important role in the forming of self-organization patterns. But
the exact underlying framework cannot be established without doubt.
Several correlations between density and lane-formation characteristics

were found to be statistically significant. Yet, other linked correlations
could not be proven to be statistically valid. From the correlations that
were proven it can be deduced that all other correlations are indeed also
present, but cannot be proven due to the magnitude of the uncertainties.
Therefore, it is concluded that, even though correlations were found to
exist between the self-organization characteristics and the macroscopic
flow parameters, more research with more stable footage or better
data analysis techniques is necessary to prove that the other expected
correlations are also valid.
The lack of agreement between this research and Hoogendoorn et al.
(2008) cannot be clearly stated based on these results. Based on both
sets of results can however be concluded that pedestrian experiments
at a microscopic level (<20 pedestrian, <10m passage width) cannot be
extrapolated directly to the size of crowds. Issues that are of limited
influence at a microscopic level seem to have a large influence at the level
of a crowd. Which issues are of influence are for now underdermined.
Organisation Lowlands
At the area under analysis several trends have been seen, that were not
directly related to the main research question. First of all, the densities
at the experiment grounds never became dangerous for any of the
pedestrians. And because the passageway was very wide, pedestrians
were at no point during the recordings forced to be in a very high density
area. However, during the outflow phase of the concert it was found
that the queues for both the coin register and the toilets hampered the
flow. The high density regions occurred at the places where flow was
hampered. It is therefore concluded that a slight change of the Lowlands
layout, might solve these flow reducing factors.
12.4 Implications
The UAV recording technique, the analysis software and the proposed
framework all have implications for both research applications and the
practice crowd management.
12.4.1 UAV recording method

The research practice needs techniques and methods that are reliable,
easily adjustable and precise. Crowd managers at the other hand want
techniques that are easy to use, work online (calculation speed trumps
precision) for long periods of time and are robust (both to weather
conditions and mishandling). Gathering footage on pedestrian crowd
movements by UAV is easy, works online (as long as no data analysis
is necessary), the UAV is easily adjustable and reliable. However, the
robustness of the method is currently not great. The stability of the UAV
is severely influenced by wind conditions. Additionally, a UAV cannot
fly when it rains, making it an unreliable tool for crowd management.
Furthermore, a pilot needs to be trained to handle the UAV. The batteries
of the UAV are depleted quickly, forcing it to return to base every 10-20
minutes. Besides all this, the pilot needs to be able to always have a visual
of the helicopter, since the UAV is steered based on visual verification.
These five issues together make the UAV less suitable for the crowd
management practice.
The UAV recording technique is very easy to implement. Very limited
preparation time is needed to bring the helicopter into the air. And because
the helicopter can be flown to a certain location in the air, the research
team does not need access to the exact experiment location while the
event is ongoing. The team does need an open field within a reasonable
distance (<100 m), so the the UAV can reach it quickly to reload the power
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supply. However, at the moment, the limited recording time due to quick
battery depletion renders the method practically less suitable for online
analysis over longer periods of time (> 20 min). However, when one
has the luxury to use a generator and multiple accus (and do not need
continuous eyes in the air), the UAV recording technique is a footage
recording technique to take into consideration. When one has the
possibility to wait for good weather, and one does not need continuous
footage over a long time, the UAV is the tool to use to record pedestrian
crowd movements. This new technique is therefore more suitable for a
research environment.
Besides pedestrian movements, the UAV recording method can also be
used to record other moving object phenomena where a large recording
area is important.
12.4.2. Chain of software programs

However, the stability of the recordings currently influence the precision
of analysis in a negative manner. This can be fixed by means of good
stabilization software. The chain of software programs (VirtualDub ImageTracker - MODT tool) allows users to analyze pedestrian crowd
footage. Until now detecting pedestrians in crowded situations was
mainly done manually. Both VirtualDub and ImageTracker allow
researchers to work with footage recorded from unstable recording
medium. The developed MODT tool allows for a next step in pedestrian
crowd research. This combination of automatic detection and tracking
of pedestrians in crowds under specific circumstances (low densities
[k<2 P/m2], distinctive clothing colours, reasonably stable footage, etc),
allows for reasonably fast analyses, while they used to be of a very
153
tedious nature. Furthermore, the manual detection decreases the time

necessary to analyze the high density areas in pedestrian crowds.
Next to pedestrian research, the MODT tool is specially designed to
track objects about which limited information (< 20 pixels per object) is
available, that have a distinctive colour with respect to their immediate
background, have variable surface areas throughout the footage and have
unrestricted motion in 2 directions (X & Y). Therefore, the MODT tool can
also be used to analyze other processes where the same characteristics
are present. For example people exiting a stadium, automobiles at a
highway intersection or even traffic (pedestrian, bicycles and vehicles) in
a shared space environment.
12.4.3 Pedestrian movements

The walking velocities in sequence 5 also not seemed to be influenced by
the experienced density while the concert was ongoing, while a significant
relation between velocity and density was found for the sequences
recorded after the end of the concert. It is hypothesised that during the
concert the pedestrians display non-goal oriented behavior, while after
the concert the behavior changes to goal-oriented movements. This
implies that the macroscopic parameters are influenced by the state of
mind of the pedestrian. Even more so, than thought before.
The difference between the results found by Hoogendoorn et al. (2008)
and this research also implies that the scale of events gives in this case rise
to completely different pedestrian behavior. Whether this is due to the
difference in observed densities, or due to the difference in numbers, or
something entirely different is upto this point uncertain. The above does
however imply, that pedestrian crowd behavior cannot be completely
described using only macroscopic flow parameters.
12.4.4 Crowd Management

When considering the in this MSc. thesis found framework to be valid,
there are also implications for practical crowd management. The results
suggest that the width of the lanes grows with increasing experienced
densities. Taking this one step further, one can assume that dangerous
situations arise when these widening lanes start to touch each other.
Therefore, crowd management becomes important when the lanes touch
and are decreasing in number (< 4 but depending on the total width of
the passageway), since at this density all lanes excises forces upon the
other lanes.
12.5 Angles for further research

During the research process several alleys of research have been shortly
touched upon, but have ,due to the limited time available, been left for
others to further explore. The directions of research that might improve
the results of this research or that lead to interesting other applications of
this research will be discussed shortly underneath.
12.5.1 Further exploration of proposed techniques

Within this research a combination of several techniques is proposed
in order to transform the footage into data. A relatively new footage
recording technique was for the first time used to record pedestrian
crowd movements. This first trial has provided reasonable good results.
But further exploration of the technique is necessary to understand the
best conditions to work with a UAV. Next to the technique involved in
flying and recording with a UAV, also the ImageTracker software needs
to be further developed. Especially the slight rotations still present in
the stabilized footage influence the results of the data analysis severely.
Solving this issue might provide far better stabilization results. Also the
MODT tool is still under development. Several techniques are combined
in the MODT tool. The automatic detection tool works at the moment
good for low density crowd movements. However for high densities the
tool is insufficiently equipped. By using the picture colours in combination
with the pixel patterns present may provide a better results. Furthermore
the tracking is now based on a combination of an optical flow calculation,
a Kalman filter and a local search. More research into all three methods
is necessary to optimize the working of the tracking software. The last
part of the proposed techniques consisted of the data analysis methods.
For now the recording of the self-organisation characteristics has been
done manually. Establishing an automatic procedure that is able to use
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the same cues would reduce the error and alleviate the amount of work
involved in this procedure greatly. The MODT tool is functional but not
an optimized software program working on any platform. Also the MODT
interface can use extra development time.
12.5.2 Further exploration of theory

Besides the extra research needed at the practical side of this research,
also the pedestrian theory needs to be further explored. From the
literature review it can be taken away that there is no consensus on the
exact method of calculation of the pedestrian macroscopic flow variables.
For now it is hard to compare the results of several pedestrian research
papers due to the lack of agreement. The lack of understanding of which
factors influencing pedestrian movements enhances these issues. For
vehicular traffic a solid theoretic basis is present while in pedestrian traffic
flow research the practical and theoretic side are still far apart. Extensive
research on both sides (theory development and experimental research)
is needed to close the gap.
12.5.3 Other techniques for pedestrian analysis

This MSc. thesis has predominantly focussed at the workability of the
UAV recording technique. But more techniques are available to detect,
track and analyze pedestrian movements. In the video detection realm
several CCTV related software programs are already available able to
online detect, record and process pedestrian movements. These systems
are currently build to look at small areas (max 10 x 10 meters), but might
be developed further for far bigger areas. Either through the linkage of
smaller systems, or by increasing the scope of the recordings. But next to
155
generic video methods, also the exploration new video techniques such
Figure 12.6: Lowlands grounds next to ALPHA tent (source: www.ididid.com )
as infrared and night vision cameras might proof useful for situations
were normal techniques cannot be used due to severe fluctuations in
light intensity or the total lack thereof.
But not only video recordings can be used to detect, track and analyze
pedestrian movement. Upcoming in both the analysis of pedestrian and
vehicular traffic is the use of smartphone data. Bluetooth and WIFI are
both being used to gather data about pedestrian movements. However,
at the moment the adaptation rate of smart phones is less than 100%.
So for now a mixture of smartphone data and other data sources is
needed to establish reliable results. Yet, the accuracy of smartphone data
is admirable. Further research in the smartphone related techniques is
needed to increase the capabilities of this already fruitful technique.
Another techniques that is predicted to help pedestrian movement
analysis along is the use of RFID tags. For now these technique is only
used sporadic in very specific situations, but by small adaptations could
prove useful in situations where pedestrians wear their ticket with them
(especially festivals). Further development is necessary for this technique
to reach its full potential.
157
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Figure 12.7: ALPHA tent (source: www.ididid.com)
XVI
Postface
Acknowledgment
It took seven months of work to convert an initial hunch into a thesis. In

the mean time I have got to know Matlab better than I could ever dream
of. I also learned a few bits and pieces about pedestrian behaviour. But
the gathered result are more interesting than I thought was achievable
when prof. Hoogendoorn first suggested this master thesis project.
This MSc. thesis project has only been possible because it was able to
record footage of pedestrian crowd movements at a unique location. This
has been made possible by the help the VPRO, who saw an opportunity
and helped achieving it. I would also like to thank Loc7000 and the
organisation of the festival Lowlands, who both granted us access to the
grounds while the festival was ongoing.
During the research process a mediocre programming script transformed

in a user-friendly software program. The behaviour of pedestrians can
be analyzed in a manner not often seen before. The resulting pedestrian
studies have been used in the development of a theory on the transition
regions between pedestrian movement regimes. Even though a theory
is only validated when it withstands criticism over time, the proposition
looks promising. It gives insights into one of the motives underlying
self-organisation. Far more research is needed in order to completely
understand how and why crowd movements appear the way they do.
Maybe well never understand everything. Yet, I think that this MSc. thesis
is a symbolic step in the right direction.
Next to the people who made the research possible, I also want to thank
my graduation committee. Prof. dr. S.P. Hoogendoorn for his wild ideas
and the possibility to play with one of the coolest research toys available.
Looking back, it has been an interesting roller coaster ride. Impressions
have been following each other quickly. Also dr.ir. W. Daamen, my daily
advisor, for her advise and the thorough way she scrutinized everything
I produced. Between the two of them they showed what research is all
about. I further want to thank both prof. dr. ir. B. Gorte and ir. Wiggenraad
as members of my graduation team. Even though the interactions have
not been often, both helped me focus on what was really important.
Last of all, I want to thank the people who have lived with me outside
my work throughout this research process. Their patience with me
when my head was temporarily not available for anything else has
been appreciated. I want to specially thanks Bianca for the tea and the
conversations. And above all Wouter for the drawings, the advise, the
scolding and everything else.
Delft, March 2012
Dorine Duives XVII
D.Duives
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Analysis of Pedestrian Crowd Movements at Lowland

(Department of Transport & Planning - CEG)

(Department of Transport & Planning - CEG)

(Department of Transport & Planning CEG)

(Department of Transport & Planning CEG)

Analysis of Pedestrian Crowd Movements at Lowlands

Figure 1: Artist impression Lowlands experiment terrain (source : Author)

May 23th 2010 prof. Hoogendoorn contacted me about the possibility to

Analysis of Pedestrian Crowd Movements at Lowlands

footage on the description of the behavior.

Analysis of Pedestrian Crowd Movements at Lowlands

parameters or even given a quantitative description of the pattern itself.

the footage. Movement of the camera introduces interlacing, image

width of lanes vs. velocity

number of lanes vs. density

width of lanes vs. density

number of lanes vs. flow

width of lanes vs. flow

It was found that several relationships are significantly different from 0.

Analysis of Pedestrian Crowd Movements at Lowlands

Figure S.1: Converse concert at Lowlands 2011 (source: www.converseblog.com)

second phase (lane-formation) is the existence of lanes at medium high

Figure S.2: Pedestrian self-organisation framework (density vs. velocity)

The data analysis was however influenced by impurities caused by

Figure S.3: Pedestrian self-organisation framework (density vs. flow)

Analysis of Pedestrian Crowd Movements at Lowlands

Part A: Research set-up

Chapter 1. Research Motives

Part B: Literature Review

Chapter 3. Traffic flow theory

Part C: Software development

Chapter 6. Quick-scan footage

Part D: Theory development

Chapter 9. Analysis of software results

Chapter 11. Crowd movement framework

Analysis of Pedestrian Crowd Movements at Lowlands

Artist impression Lowlands experiment terrain

Shibuya crossing pedestrian flow

Pedestrian crowd disasters

Density calculation problem

Decision structure pedestrian movement

Lowlands footage - total shot

Photos of UAV data gathering technique at Lowlands

A packed Alpha tent at Lowlands

Image from first data recording sequence

Flow diagram ImageTracker

Vector analysis tab

Calculation time software program

Festival Isle of Wright

Rotation plane around XY-axis

Origin/destination locations pedestrians

Analysis of Pedestrian Crowd Movements at Lowlands

Macroscopic velocity analysis sequence 5

Qualitative Comparison of Point Trackers

Pressure on both sides

Koninginnedag Amsterdam Museumplein

Summary of the range of velocity-density functions

Fundamental diagram (k-v) sequence 5

Velocity distribution per density class

Histogram number of lanes

Scatterplot number of lanes vs. walking velocity

Analysis of Pedestrian Crowd Movements at Lowlands

Width of lanes in the lane-formation

Part A: Research Set-up