Zahmah social force model for pedestrian movement

Abstract

The Social Force Model is one of the well-known approaches that could successfully simulate pedestrian’s movement realistically. However, it is not suitable to simulate a complex pedestrian movement. Hence, this research proposed a novel model which improved the Social Force Model for simulating high density crowd such as Tawaf. Tawaf is an Islamic ritual, which requires agents to encircle the Kaabah. This ritual has been complex yet unique, due to its capacity, density, and various demographic backgrounds of the agents. A certain set of rules that must be followed by each agent, which introduces anomalies in the flow around the Kaabah. The agents also will be assigned with unique attributes such as; gender, walking speed and intention outlook to make the simulations more realistic. The findings of this research will contribute to the simulation activities of pedestrians in a highly dense population.