EVALUATION OF MEASUREMENT METHODS FOR DETERMINING INDIVIDUAL MOVEMENT IN CROWDS

Sammanfattning: Since the mid-20th century, investigations of parameters that affect crowd movement have mainly been performed via video analysis. However, modern alternatives have been used to investigate how a person moves, but only with one person at a time. The purpose of this study is to utilise two different measurement methods in order to collect material that can be investigated in the future, both during this thesis and further on, and to evaluate the methods used. The evaluation is performed in order to establish which method is preferable in future studies. Eye tracking equipment will be combined with one of the methods to review what people look at when moving in a crowd. To do this, two experiments were carried out, one utilising the traditional video capture method and the other using a motion capture system. The results show a possible logarithmic relationship between inter person distance and step length, in relation to velocity. A relationship between contact distance and velocity is dubbed “contact buffer”, and seems to be approaching 0.3 s. After evaluating the two methods used, the optical capture method is deemed the more favourable, although there are advantages and disadvantages for both. The eye tracking results point at a possible dependence between what a person looks at, and both the occupant density and the height of the person.