Edinburgh Napier University

  The PEDFLOW (PEDestrian FLOW) project is concerned with the development of a microscopic model of pedestrian movement in a congested urban environment. Autonomous agent technology is utilised to represent each pedestrian as an agent capable of making its own decisions based upon a part of the observable scene local to that pedestrian. The model utilises a single rule set that is made specific to each agent by the incorporation of parameters specific to that pedestrian. It is used to evaluate infrastructural changes intended to promote walking in the urban environment. Verification of the model is achieved by a series of before and after experiments in which the area to be modelled is video taped before and after an infrastructural change. Automated analysis of the video tape enables the extraction of behavioural patterns to determine any changes in behaviour. This is then further analysed to determine whether the rule set needs modification to capture any behavioural changes.