An Empirical study and a Conceptual Model on Heterogeneity of Pedestrian Social Groups for Friend-group and Family-group

Existing literature suggested that pedestrian flow is largely effected by the nature of pedestrian group, which is a common phenomenon in crowds. However, the influence of social groups with heterogeneity on the crowd movement has not yet been fully elucidated. In order to recognize the movement characteristics of groups with heterogeneity and its influence on the pedestrian crowd, this paper takes the social-groups with heterogeneity as the research object, particularly for two types of groups, namely, Friend-group and Family-group. The groups of heterogeneity were analysed by observing group size, velocity, interpersonal distance, step frequency and walking pattern. The results shown that groups do have effects on pedestrian movement and the degree of influence depends on the heterogeneity of groups. Based on these observation, this paper developed a conceptual model on the basis of the existing social force model which obtaining the qualitative relationship between the parameter of model and groups’ heterogeneity.