Dataset Information

Intrinsic group behaviour: Dependence of pedestrian dyad dynamics on principal social and personal features.

ABSTRACT: Being determined by human social behaviour, pedestrian group dynamics may depend on "intrinsic properties" such as the purpose of the pedestrians, their personal relation, gender, age, and body size. In this work we investigate the dynamical properties of pedestrian dyads (distance, spatial formation and velocity) by analysing a large data set of automatically tracked pedestrian trajectories in an unconstrained "ecological" setting (a shopping mall), whose apparent physical and social group properties have been analysed by three different human coders. We observed that females walk slower and closer than males, that workers walk faster, at a larger distance and more abreast than leisure oriented people, and that inter-group relation has a strong effect on group structure, with couples walking very close and abreast, colleagues walking at a larger distance, and friends walking more abreast than family members. Pedestrian height (obtained automatically through our tracking system) influences velocity and abreast distance, both growing functions of the average group height. Results regarding pedestrian age show that elderly people walk slowly, while active age adults walk at the maximum velocity. Groups with children have a strong tendency to walk in a non-abreast formation, with a large distance (despite a low abreast distance). A cross-analysis of the interplay between these intrinsic features, taking in account also the effect of an "extrinsic property" such as crowd density, confirms these major results but reveals also a richer structure. An interesting and unexpected result, for example, is that the velocity of groups with children increases with density, at least in the low-medium density range found under normal conditions in shopping malls. Children also appear to behave differently according to the gender of the parent.

SUBMITTER: Zanlungo F

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5667819 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

Intrinsic group behaviour: Dependence of pedestrian dyad dynamics on principal social and personal features.

Zanlungo Francesco F Yücel Zeynep Z Brščić Dražen D Kanda Takayuki T Hagita Norihiro N

PloS one 20171102 11

Being determined by human social behaviour, pedestrian group dynamics may depend on "intrinsic properties" such as the purpose of the pedestrians, their personal relation, gender, age, and body size. In this work we investigate the dynamical properties of pedestrian dyads (distance, spatial formation and velocity) by analysing a large data set of automatically tracked pedestrian trajectories in an unconstrained "ecological" setting (a shopping mall), whose apparent physical and social group prop ...[more]

PMID: 29095913

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Project description:This study focuses on social pedestrian groups in public spaces and makes an effort to identify the type of social relation between the group members. As a first step for this identification problem, we focus on dyads (i.e. 2 people groups). Moreover, as a mutually exclusive categorization of social relations, we consider the domain-based approach of Bugental, which precisely corresponds to social relations of colleagues, couples, friends and families, and identify each dyad with one of those relations. For this purpose, we use anonymized trajectory data and derive a set of observables thereof, namely, inter-personal distance, group velocity, velocity difference and height difference. Subsequently, we use the probability density functions (pdf) of these observables as a tool to understand the nature of the relation between pedestrians. To that end, we propose different ways of using the pdfs. Namely, we introduce a probabilistic Bayesian approach and contrast it to a functional metric one and evaluate the performance of both methods with appropriate assessment measures. This study stands out as the first attempt to automatically recognize social relation between pedestrian groups. Additionally, in doing that it uses completely anonymous data and proves that social relation is still possible to recognize with a good accuracy without invading privacy. In particular, our findings indicate that significant recognition rates can be attained for certain categories and with certain methods. Specifically, we show that a very good recognition rate is achieved in distinguishing colleagues from leisure-oriented dyads (families, couples and friends), whereas the distinction between the leisure-oriented dyads results to be inherently harder, but still possible at reasonable rates, in particular if families are restricted to parent-child groups. In general, we establish that the Bayesian method outperforms the functional metric one due, probably, to the difficulty of the latter to learn observable pdfs from individual trajectories.

Project description:While Chinese cities are pursuing economic development, meeting citizen demand for medical treatment has only gradually been put on the agenda. Theoretically, in the second half of a person's life, demand for medical treatment will rise sharply. Given limited medical resources, the match between demand and supply becomes more difficult. We conducted questionnaires in Shanghai to describe whether there are obvious group differences in the elderly population's medical treatment options and provide empirical evidence on the determinants. We collected 439 Shanghai Elderly Medical Demand Characteristics Questionnaires, which included five parts: personal information, health status, elderly person's medical preference and expectation, satisfaction level for hospitals services, and medical insurance. We set up virtual explanatory variables according to the different medical behaviours of the elderly, and control variables composed of individual characteristics, socioeconomic characteristics, medical needs, medical resource availability, and medical expenditure. We used the MLR model to investigate medical treatment behaviour choice. The medical treatment behaviour of the elderly population in Shanghai is affected by multiple factors. When experiencing physical discomfort, most of them choose to go to the hospital (64.69%). Age, income, household registration, and medical insurance reimbursement policy play a role in their decision-making. For general diseases, the proportion choosing specialist hospitals or community clinics is the highest (40.78%). Age, marital status, residential status, physical state, objective distance, medical expenses, and other factors have a significant impact. For severe diseases, they are more inclined (71.07%) to visit general hospitals, with the individual's physical condition, living status, and accessibility to hospital resources more likely to affect their behaviour. Firstly, the importance of each factor varies depending on the conditions. Secondly, it may be more appropriate for China's elderly health insurance system to set reimbursement rates based on the patient's condition and disease type. Thirdly, medical behaviour has a distance friction effect, but the allocation of public service resources shows a strong centripetal concentration. It is necessary for the government to show due care about the regional distribution of the elderly population and to promote the rational distribution of medical resources in Shanghai.

Dataset Information

Intrinsic group behaviour: Dependence of pedestrian dyad dynamics on principal social and personal features.

Publications

Intrinsic group behaviour: Dependence of pedestrian dyad dynamics on principal social and personal features.

Similar Datasets

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