A Checklist for the Evaluation of Pedestrian Simulation Software Functionalities

The employment of micro-simulation tools in the phase of design of public and private spaces and facilities and for the definition of transport schemes that impact on pedestrian flows, thanks to their achieved accuracy and predictive capacity, has become a consolidated practice. These instruments provide support to the organization of spaces, services and facilities and to the definition of management procedures for normal and emergency situations. The employment of these tools is effective for various but not for all the contexts, nevertheless new features and functionalities are under constant development and new products are often launched on the market. Therefore, there is a higher necessity of standard criteria both for the evaluation of their functions, at use of practitioners and end-users, and for the definition of software requirements as reference for the developers that aim at being competitive on this market. On the basis of the authors' experience as pedestrian modelers and as researchers in the crowd modelling area, they designed a comprehensive and detailed ready-to-use checklist for the evaluation of Pedestrian Simulation Software that aims at capturing all the aspects that they claim are useful to undertake a professional study. These functions in their opinion are necessary to provide accurate results in the planning of new facilities or schemes that involve pedestrian activities. With this work the authors propose a set of criteria of evaluation for these products also at to encourage a debate for the definition of objective standards for pedestrian simulation software certification.