An exploratory step to evaluate the pedestrian flow in urban environment

The pedestrian accounts for part of the road safety problem in most developed countries. Pedestrian accidents are thus an urgent issue for safety improvement, particularly in urban area. Furthermore, recent sustainable mobility oriented policies are boosting walking in urban areas. In order to cope with this increase in pedestrian flows, European municipal authorities, responsible for road safety, traffic management and mobility, need reliable engineering methods to plan urban road safety and protect vulnerable users. Road safety management systems are usually developed to identify hazardous sites and to find suitable countermeasures. Risk exposure assessment is required to identify sites with high accident potential. This assessment requires the knowledge, on one side, of the known vehicular flows and, on the other, of the pedestrian flows, which are not normally known to road operators. In this paper a methodology to develop and calibrate forecasting model aimed at evaluating pedestrian exposure is presented. The model is based on original approach that integrates the Space Syntax modelling framework with pedestrian mobility aspects and a calibration procedure was proposed that use counts on a limited number of roads. Preliminary results derived from a case study in an urban environment seem promising and confirm the model's good ability to predict pedestrian flow.