When designing, operating, or renovating any piece of infrastructure that has large volumes of people or complex, nontrivial routes, pedestrian modelling allows us to visualize movement patterns under a range of scenarios to gain insight into the user experience and inform decision making.

This is quantified in terms of travel times, queuing, areas of density, and other metrics. Under emergency scenarios, it allows us to ensure all occupants can safely evacuate by identifying bottlenecks or underutilized routes.

When designing or renovating facilities, such as stadia, event centres, arenas, and transit stations, Pedestrian Modelling can be leveraged to optimize the following key areas:

Ingress & Egress

Determine the number of security and ticketing devices required as well as the resulting anticipated queue times.
Sizing of entrance vestibules and protected exterior spaces.
Test redundancy of ingress processes by quantifying impact on queue times when security or ticketing devices are reduced.
Sensitivity analysis on types of security equipment, from traditional “mag and bag” to modern contactless technology.
3D visualization of ingress queues throughout entire event.
Determine egress time under normal scenarios for each seating area.
Quantify egress patterns and volumes at each entrance to ensure exterior traffic modelling, traffic impact assessments, and event management plans are coordinated.
Timed egress analysis in collaboration with our fire engineering services and fire modelling to demonstrate life safety (RSET vs ASET analysis).

Intermission Analysis

Quantify Level of Service throughout concourses for range of events.
Inform layout of washrooms and concessions to maximize throughput, thus improving concession sales.
Sensitivity analysis of concession queue arrangements to maximize throughput.
3D visualization of concourse density and queues through intermission period.

Level of Service & Travel Time

Quantify Level of Service for all aspects of a station as typically required by project specific requirements and/or client specifications.
Collaborate with design team to optimize the station while meeting these LOS requirements.
Mitigate project risk by performing pedestrian modelling early in the design phase and showing conformance to LOS criteria.
Quantify platform clearance time, transfer time between services, and station egress time to show conformance to requirements or to maximize station efficiency.

Pandemic Resilience

Test future mitigation measures on all aspects of the above to determine a range of event capacities that meet stakeholder goals while mitigating risk.

Construction Staging

For each construction stage, determine and visualize the impact on pedestrian movement caused by construction hoarding or a change in available routes.
Determine if evacuation times are still acceptable and if project-specific criteria are still met (LOS, travel time, etc.).

Building Improvements

Renovations: Test design options to determine relative performance of each in terms of travel times, crowding, and life safety.
Revenue Optimization: Model existing buildings and test proposed changes to movement patterns to quantify foot traffic throughout. Drive foot traffic through operational changes to the highest value areas with revenue generating opportunities.

By using advanced tools to carefully study how users will interact with their built environment, we can create safer, better-performing buildings.

Asset Lifecycle

Build

Operate

Renew

Build

Pedestrian modelling allows us to maximize the user experience and quantify, as well as visualize, what these movement patterns look like.

Visualizing these simulations allows the design team to interrogate possible bottlenecks in the design and improve the user experience before design decisions are locked in. Crucially, all design options can also be assessed for emergency scenarios to ensure all occupants can evacuate safely.

Advanced Performance Analysis

APA allows us to maximize energy efficiency and reduce project costs.

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Mass Timber Design

Entuitive offers clients elegant and efficient timber design and engineering solutions.

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Fire Engineering

We enable our clients to realize their project goals while achieving fire safety.

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Operate & Assess

Over the life of a project, initial design assumptions that were once valid may begin to be tested.

Using updated data or projections of existing data, pedestrian and evacuation models allow us to test how these changes impact existing infrastructure and determine if performance metrics are still met. For emergency scenarios, we can calibrate our models against evacuation drills and determine if the fire safety plan provides the level of safety that is required.

Infrared Thermography

We perform building infrared scans to analyze issues with the structure’s building envelope.

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Structural Engineering

We engineer high-performance structures that respond to the evolving needs of all stakeholders.

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Building Condition Assessments (BCA)

We assess building performance, condition, and lifecycle factors for a variety of building types.

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Renew

Existing buildings, new buildings, and multi-stage transit developments can all introduce obstructions and altered walking paths during construction.

Construction stages can be analyzed to ensure minimal disruptions to surrounding areas during construction and a maximized user experience throughout the entire lifecycle of a project. By incorporating in-house construction engineering expertise, we ensure our models reflect realistic staging and construction requirements.