COMPARISON OF PEDESTRIAN FUNDAMENTAL DIAGRAM ACROSS CULTURES

Abstract

The relation between speed and density is connected with every self-organization phenomenon of pedestrian dynamics and offers the opportunity to analyze them quantitatively. But even for the simplest systems, like pedestrian streams in corridors, this fundamental relation is not completely understood. A comparison of data from literature shows that specifications in text books as well as measurements under various experimental conditions differ significantly. In this contribution it is studied whether cultural influences and length of the corridor can be the causes for these deviations. To reduce as much as possible unintentional effects, a system is chosen with reduced degrees of freedom and thus the most simple system, namely the movement of pedestrians along a line under closed boundary conditions. It is found that the speed of Indian test persons is less dependent on density than the speed of German test persons. Surprisingly the more unordered behavior of the Indians is more effective than the ordered behavior of the Germans. This may be due to differences in their self-organization behavior. Without any statistical measure one cannot conclude about whether there are differences or not. By hypothesis test it is found quantitatively that these differences exist, suggesting cultural differences in the fundamental diagram of pedestrians.