A Novel Way of Measuring Inter-Person Distance: A Study Involving an Ultrasonic Measurement Device

Sammanfattning: A Novel Way of Measuring Inter-Person Distance: A Study Involving an Ultrasonic Measurement Device The quantitative characteristics of people movement that form the fundamental diagram have an important role in the field of Fire Safety Engineering regarding evacuation. The fundamental diagram indicates the relation between crowd speed and crowd density (or inter-person distance) or flow of crowd and crowd density. These correlations are used in designing the means of egress in buildings and also computer simulations of evacuation. For either cases, the data of people movement is needed which is collected from evacuation experiments. Measuring these parameters is difficult when using traditional methods, e.g., video cameras. In this study, a new way of measuring inter-person distance by using an ultrasonic measurement device is investigated. The aim of this study is to verify the accuracy of inter-person distance data collected using an ultrasonic measurement device. As this measurement technique is a novel technology that is used for people movement, individual and group experiments were performed in order to obtain data. These controlled walking experiments were carried out in a corridor with a certain number of participants while one person carried the device. The accuracy of data obtained from the ultrasonic measurement device had been verified up to a specific inter-person distance, i.e., 2 m. The results from individual and group experiments were mostly accurate with 5% of differences between actual inter-person distances and measured ones. Measurement, procedure and systematic errors that occurred while performing experiments can result in some measurement uncertainties.