Microscopic modeling of crowds involving individuals with physical disability: Exploring social force interaction

Nearly one quarter of a population is affected by a disability which in influences crowd evacuation. Emergencies such as stampede or crowd crush can occur during evacuations. While research has investigated crowd evacuation, little has been researched involving individuals with disabilities. There is a need to understand and model individuals with disabilities in their interaction and how it impacts crowd movement. This dissertation creates a video tracking system to study heterogeneous crowds with individuals with disabilities towards conducting crowd experiments. A large-scale crowd experiment is conducted and the results are analyzed through a developed analysis graphical user interface. Preliminary results of the experiment demonstrate differences in the velocities and overtaking perception of various groups with physical disabilities. This dissertation uses these results to present a hybrid Social Force model that can capture the overall overtake behavior of the empirical data. Finally, future research goals are discussed in the eventual development of a Mass Pedestrian Evacuation system for crowds with individuals with disabilities. Lessons from this dissertation are discussed towards goals of crowd control.