Agent based model of passenger flows in airport terminals

AGENT-BASED MODEL OF PASSENGER FLOWS IN AIRPORT TERMINALS A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING FACULTY OF QUEENSLAND UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY IN FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENT FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Wenbo Ma Science and Engineering Faculty Queensland University of Technology 2012 ii Statement of Original Authorship The work contained in this thesis has not been previously submitted to meet requirements for an award at this or any other higher education institution To the best of my knowledge and belief, the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made Signature: Date: 13th June, 2013 iii iv Dedicated to my parents, Jiqin Ma and Ping Jiang v vi Keywords Agent-based model; simulation; airport; pedestrian flow; agent decision-making; Bayesian networks; influence diagram; routing decisions; route-choice decision-making vii Abstract Passenger flow studies in airport terminals have shown consistent statistical relationships between airport spatial layout and pedestrian movement, facilitating prediction of movement from terminal designs However, these studies are done at an aggregate level and not incorporate how individual passengers make decisions at a microscopic level Therefore, they not explain the formation of complex movement flows In addition, existing models mostly focus on standard airport processing procedures such as immigration and security, but seldom consider discretionary activities of passengers, and thus are not able to truly describe the full range of passenger flows within airport terminals As the route-choice decisionmaking of passengers involves many uncertain factors within the airport terminals, the mechanisms to fulfil the capacity of managing the route-choice have proven difficult to acquire and quantify Could the study of cognitive factors of passengers (i.e human mental preferences of deciding which on-airport facility to use) be useful to tackle these issues? Assuming the movement in virtual simulated environments can be analogous to movement in real environments, passenger behaviour dynamics can be similar to those generated in virtual experiments Three levels of dynamics have been devised for motion control: the localised field, tactical level, and strategic level A localised field refers to basic motion capabilities, such as walking speed, direction and avoidance of obstacles The other two fields represent cognitive route-choice decision-making This research views passenger flow problems via a “bottom-up approach”, regarding individual passengers as independent intelligent agents who can behave autonomously and are able to interact with others and the ambient environment In this regard, passenger flow formation becomes an emergent phenomenon of large numbers of passengers interacting with others In the thesis, first, the passenger flow in airport terminals was investigated Discretionary activities of passengers were integrated with standard processing procedures in the research The localised field for passenger motion dynamics was constructed by a devised force-based model Next, advanced traits of passengers (such as their desire to shop, their comfort with technology and their willingness to viii ask for assistance) were formulated to facilitate tactical route-choice decisionmaking The traits consist of quantified measures of mental preferences of passengers when they travel through airport terminals Each category of the traits indicates a decision which passengers may take They were inferred through a Bayesian network model by analysing the probabilities based on currently available data Route-choice decision-making was finalised by calculating corresponding utility results based on those probabilities observed Three sorts of simulation outcomes were generated: namely, queuing length before checkpoints, average dwell time of passengers at service facilities, and instantaneous space utilisation Queuing length reflects the number of passengers who are in a queue Long queues no doubt cause significant delay in processing procedures The dwell time of each passenger agent at the service facilities were recorded The overall dwell time of passenger agents at typical facility areas were analysed so as to demonstrate portions of utilisation in the temporal aspect For the spatial aspect, the number of passenger agents who were dwelling within specific terminal areas can be used to estimate service rates All outcomes demonstrated specific results by typical simulated passenger flows They directly reflect terminal capacity The simulation results strongly suggest that integrating discretionary activities of passengers makes the passenger flows more intuitive, observing probabilities of mental preferences by inferring advanced traits make up an approach capable of carrying out tactical route-choice decision-making On the whole, the research studied passenger flows in airport terminals by an agent-based model, which investigated individual characteristics of passengers and their impact on psychological route-choice decisions of passengers Finally, intuitive passenger flows in airport terminals were able to be realised in simulation ix List of Publications Journal article  Wenbo Ma, Tristan Kleinschmidt, Clinton Fookes and Prasad K.D.V Yarlagadda, “Micro-simulation of airport passengers with advanced traits: a case study of Brisbane Airport international departure terminal”, Simulation Modelling Practice and Theory (Under review)  Wenbo Ma, Tristan Kleinschmidt, Clinton Fookes and Prasad K.D.V Yarlagadda, “A review: Pedestrian dynamics in the real and simulated world”, Journal of Urban Planning and Development (To be submitted) Peer-reviewed conference papers  Wenbo Ma, Tristan Kleinschmidt, Clinton Fookes and Prasad K.D.V Yarlagadda, (2011) Check-in processing: simulation of passengers with advanced traits In Fu, Michael & White, K Preston (Eds.) Proceedings of the 2011 Winter Simulation Conference, pp 1783-1794, IEEE, Phoenix, AZ, USA  Tristan Kleinschmidt, Xufeng Guo, Wenbo Ma, and Prasad K.D.V Yarlagadda (2011) Including airport duty-free shopping in arriving passenger simulation and the opportunities this presents In Jain, S., Creasey, R R., Himmelspach, J., White, K.P., &Fu, M (Eds.) Proceedings of the 2011 Winter Simulation Conference, pp 210-221, IEEE, Phoenix, AZ, USA  Wenbo Ma, Tristan Kleinschmidt, Clinton Fookes and Prasad K.D.V Yarlagadda, (2012) Modelling Passengers Flow at Airport Terminals Individual Agent Decision Model for Stochastic Passenger Behaviour Proceedings of the 2th International Conference on Simulation and Modelling Methodologies, Technologies and Applications, pp.109-113, Rome, Italy  Wenbo Ma, Tristan Kleinschmidt, Clinton Fookes and Prasad K.D.V Yarlagadda, (2012) A micro-simulation of airport passengers with advanced traits Proceedings of 28th International Congress of Aeronautical Society, ICAS 2012 - 10.9.4, Brisbane, Australia x ... passenger flows within airport terminals As the route-choice decisionmaking of passengers involves many uncertain factors within the airport terminals, the mechanisms to fulfil the capacity of managing... phenomenon of large numbers of passengers interacting with others In the thesis, first, the passenger flow in airport terminals was investigated Discretionary activities of passengers were integrated... passenger flows in airport terminals by an agent- based model, which investigated individual characteristics of passengers and their impact on psychological route-choice decisions of passengers Finally,