On the relationship between crowd density and movement velocity

The crowd flow pattern under emergency situations has been studied on the basis of dynamic movement principles. It has been demonstrated that the surrounding crowd density will influence the speed of an individual. The derivation of the movement equations of people with respect to the impacts at front, back and lateral directions has been given, and it shows that the impacts have substantial influence on the people's movement speed. The logarithmic relationship between the crowd density and the speed is in good agreement with the published field data. The study also demonstrates that the influence of the crowd movement velocity by the inter-person effect at the lateral direction is much lower than that at the front-back direction. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.