Tom Carden

Awarded VEIV MSc

Tom's doctorate research concerns the development of interactive and visual tools to simulate, predict and illustrate the movements of people in a building, aimed at the design phase of building projects. If we simulate and illustrate the predicted movements of people in a building, we can:

• Validate new designs against known behaviour from old designs
• Better understand and improve upon existing buildings
• Help train building operators to better manage their buildings
• Generate building visualisations showing life-like usage patterns
• Illustrate the consequence of changes to building structure (or business practices)

We suggest that realistic pedestrian behaviour in a building (e.g. an airport terminal) is can be generated by modelling:

• The spatial configuration of the building
• The person's agenda (shopping list, check-in procedures, etc.) and preferences
• The signage and other aids to navigation
• The influence of other people in the building

Primary Supervisor: Alan Penn

Industry Sponsor: YRM Limited. Architects, planners, designers

Simulation of pedestrian movements