Physics of Human Crowds Corbetta, Alessandro; Toschi, Federico
Annual review of condensed matter physics,
03/2023, Letnik:
14, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Understanding the behavior of human crowds is a key step toward a safer society and more livable cities. Despite the individual variability and will of single individuals, human crowds, from dilute ...to dense, invariably display a remarkable set of universal features and statistically reproducible behaviors. Here, we review ideas and recent progress in employing the language and tools from physics to develop a deeper understanding about the dynamics of pedestrians.
Land surface emissivity is a significant variable in energy budgets, land cover assessments, and environment and climate studies. However, the assumption of an emissivity constant is being used in ...Gobi broadband emissivity (GbBE) parameterization scheme in numerical models because of limited knowledge surrounding the spatiotemporal variation characteristics of GbBE. To address this issue, we analyzed the variation characteristics of GbBE and possible impact factor-surface soil moisture based on long-term continuous and high temporal resolution field observational experiments over a typical Gobi underlying surface in arid and semiarid areas in northwestern China. The results indicate that GbBE has obvious daily and diurnal variation features, especially diurnal cycle characteristics. The multi-year average of the daily average of GbBE is in the range of 0.932 to 0.970 with an average of 0.951 ± 0.008, and the average diurnal GbBE is in the range of 0.880 to 0.940 with an average of 0.906 ± 0.018. GbBE varies with surface soil moisture content. We observed a slight decrease in GbBE with an increase in soil moisture, although this change was not very obvious because of the low soil moisture in this area. Nevertheless, we think that soil moisture must be one of the most significant impact factors on GbBE in arid and semiarid areas. Soil moisture must be taken into account into the parameterization schemes of bare soil broadband emissivity in land surface models. Additional field experiments and studies should be carried out in order to clarify this issue.
Nowadays, the famous tourist attractions are becoming more and more popular for people from all over the world. Thus, to ensure the safety of tourists is a tough task in such crowded area. The study ...of pedestrian’s characteristics in crowd movement is essential for safety management. In this article, both uni- and bidirectional observational experiments were conducted to quantitatively analyze the movement properties of pedestrians in a zigzag corridor which is located in a tourism area named Yuyuan business district in Shanghai. Several phenomena have been found during the tourists’ movement process: congestion at boundary, competing and bypassing behavior, and flow gap. As indicated by the transit time of pedestrians in both uni- and bidirectional scenarios, pedestrians in bidirectional pattern (>10 s) spend more time on going through the corridor than that in unidirectional one (<10 s). Besides, the fundamental diagrams in both uni- and bidirectional scenarios are significantly different from data in a controlled experiment, and obvious differences are observed within the density regime from 1.5 to 2.5 ped/m2 between the uni- and bidirectional scenarios. In addition, spatial distributions of density and velocity demonstrate that pedestrians would like to cluster at the boundary of straight corridors in both uni- and bidirectional scenarios. The results could enrich the database of fundamental diagrams, and then be used for model calibration by taking the actual situation into consideration in similar scenarios.
Background
One way in which we make inferences about ecological processes is via experimentation. Many ecological processes happen at landscape extents and it is at this extent that experimentation ...is more challenging. This review explores the intersection between experimentation, ecological processes and landscape ecology. Specifically, this review seeks to discover how scientists design experiments to understand ecological processes at landscape scales.
Results
I found 87 papers where these three concepts intersected, and reviewed them in more depth to assess characteristics of scale (treatment and study area extent), replication, research question and experiment type.
Conclusions
The findings suggest that experimental approaches for understanding ecological processes are well established, and beginning to more readily accommodate spatial dimensions. However, there is room to integrate more spatially explicit, landscape-scale experiments into studies of ecological processes.
Smallholder farmers in sub‐Saharan Africa recurrently face situations of complex and dynamic decision trade‐offs. Short‐term‐oriented activities such as fertilizer application help to cover immediate ...food needs but compromise on future food production. Long‐term‐oriented production activities such as building up soil fertility are important systemic leverage points; however, they compromise on today's harvests. This article uses a semicomputerized observational experiment in Zambia to investigate farm management decision making with conflicting production objectives in a dynamic context. The results reveal that, overall, Zambian smallholder farmers have a strong and significant preference for short‐term‐oriented production activities, which leads to a suboptimal performance in production in the long term. A mind shift towards more long‐term‐oriented production activities is required to sustainably increase food production. Our findings point at two things in this regard: First, we identify decision rules that successful performers have applied and that should be the basis for capacity building strategies. Second, we indicate that our approach itself contributed to recognition of the importance of a longer term perspective.
The purpose of this study is to clarify the effects of brightness and loudness of the background music on interpersonal communications in a cafe. An investigation to observe the conversational ...behavior of subjects, and an experiment to estimate suitability of lighting and sound environments for various behaviors were carried out under four different conditions. The principle results are summarized as follows. 1. Women tended to have more frequent eye contact than men under every condition. 2. Men tended to talk considerably under low illumination, and women tended to talk more under conditions of low sound volume. 3. Men tended to bend forward under high illumination, and women tended to bend forward under low illumination. 4. There were combined effects of illumination and music loudness on the evaluation of usage behaviors. For example, studying was appropriate in bright and quiet condition.
This research examined experimentally the effects of lighting colors and types of background music on conversational behavior at a cafe. When each table was occupied by same sex friends in the ...laboratory assumed as a cafe, the effect of the background music on their behavior was strong, but the effect of the lighting colors was weak. That is, when the tempo of the background music was fast there was a tendency for eye contact, the amount of conversation, and the conversational volume to increase. The lighting colors were important in regard to providing sufficient illumination for conversation partners to see each other's faces. Ease of talking was affected both by lighting colors and background music. The evaluation was more favorable with the use of general white lighting and with background music of an intermediate tempo, such as bossa nova and ballad style music.
The purpose of this research is to examine the relation between the direction of benches and sitting behaviors in a street. An observational investigation that targeted public users, and an ...evaluational experiment by subject were conducted, and the following aspects became clear. 1. The number of people who sat on benches was larger when the benches were arranged face to face than when they were arranged back to back. This was especially remarkable in users for a short time. The reason was assumed to be related to accessibility from the street to the benches. 2. The number of men who sat on benches was larger when the benches were arranged back to back. On the other hand, the number of women who sat on benches was larger when the benches were arranged face to face. 3. Behaviors such as eating and drinking were observed more frequently when benches were arranged face to face. Subjects reported that they felt that people sitting on benches back to back were annoyed by pedestrians.
EASINESS OF TALKING TO STRANGERS IN SMOKING AREAS KOBAYASHI, Shigeo; TSUDA, Satoshi
Journal of Architecture and Planning (Transactions of AIJ),
2008/01/30, Letnik:
73, Številka:
623
Journal Article
Odprti dostop
The purpose of this research is to identify environmental factors related to the ease of borrowing a cigarette lighter from a stranger in a smoking area. An experiment was carried out in which ...subjects actually talked to ordinary smokers and borrowed lighters at smoking areas in Yokohama city. As a result, it was found that the ease of talking to a stranger corresponds almost exactly to the ease of entering the smoking area. The distance between the smoking area and the surrounding traffic, and the numbers of surrounding pedestrians were connected with the ease of borrowing behavior. The width of the entrance to the smoking area and the arrangement of benches, etc. were also related to the evaluation. The characteristics of suitable smoking areas for borrowing behavior were summarized into three main factors, that is, people can approach the place without feeling too conspicuous, smokers in the place seem not to have monopolized spaces, and the smoking area has a casual atmosphere which promotes interaction between people.
PDF
