Empirical studies and computational results of a proxemic - based model of pedestrian crowd dynamics

The thesis work is organized in two main parts. The first includes a review of the social science framework about crowd dynamics and proxemics, and the methodological approach. The second part consists of several empirical studies. A summary of the contents is provided as follows. Starting from the pioneering study of Gustave Le Bon (1897), the social science contributions about crowds are reviewed in Chapter 2 (Contagion-Transformation Theory, Elaborated Social Identity Model, Emergent Norm Theory, Affiliative Approach). Chapter 3 presents the proxemic theory, with reference to the notion of personal space and the group proxemic behavior in static and motion situations. Chapter 4 presents the methodological approach, as composed of: in vivo observation, in vitro experiments and in silico simulations. Chapter 5 proposed the results achieved by means of two observations performed at the Campus of the University of Milano-Bicocca (Italy) and the Vittorio Emanuele II gallery (Milan, Italy). Chapter 6 presents two experiments focused on the combined impact of turning path and grouping on pedestrian crowd dynamics and the size of pedestrian personal space. Chapter 7 presents a simulation campaign performed by using the platform MAKKSim. The results achieved have been compared with the collected empirical data for sake of model validation. The thesis ends with final remarks about the achieved results and future works towards the improvement of the computational model of MAKKSim.