Beyond gut feeling: Plan safe, seamless major events

The design of event venues must ensure safe and efficient pedestrian circulation, even under peak loads such as entry, intermissions, or post-event exit. Layout and processing capacity decisions directly impact both user experience and safety. 

Viswalk enables high-fidelity simulation of pedestrian dynamics within venues such as stadiums, arenas, or festival sites. Individual route choice, interactions, and responses to environmental factors such as signage are explicitly modeled. Queue formation at entrances, exits, and security checkpoints is analyzed under varying demand and operational conditions. 

Density, flow, and level-of-service metrics support the identification of bottlenecks and the optimization of layouts, gate configurations, and wayfinding strategies, ensuring robust performance under event-specific demand.

Event traffic planning requires system-level coordination across all transport modes to prevent localized measures from creating network-wide inefficiencies. A fragmented approach often leads to bottlenecks at modal interfaces and reduced overall performance. 

PTV Vissim combined with Viswalk enables synchronized simulation of vehicular traffic, public transport, and pedestrian flows within a single model. Time-dependent demand profiles represent realistic arrival and departure waves, including modal split variations. Traffic management measures such as road closures, signal control strategies, and parking concepts can be evaluated alongside intermodal transfer processes and shared-space interactions. 

Key performance indicators such as delays, queue lengths, densities, and level of service enable capacity testing and scenario comparison, supporting the development of robust and efficient mobility concepts.

For large-scale events, safety compliance and risk mitigation are critical planning drivers. Authorities and organizers must demonstrate that evacuation concepts are robust under both expected peak conditions and unexpected disruptions. 

PTV Vissim and Viswalk enable dynamic simulation of emergency scenarios, including partial or full evacuations during peak ingress or egress. Time-dependent demand reflects realistic event surges, while pedestrian behavior under stress – such as adaptive route choice and high-density interactions – is explicitly modeled. Traffic impacts such as road closures, reduced capacities, and emergency vehicle routing are integrated into the simulation. 

Detailed KPIs including evacuation times, flow rates, and density thresholds provide a robust basis for validating safety concepts and optimizing emergency response strategies.

During major events, operational reliability becomes the key challenge for public transport systems, as demand is highly concentrated in short time windows. Service disruptions or insufficient capacity can quickly propagate across the network. 

PTV Vissim enables detailed modeling of event-specific public transport operations, including schedules, dispatching logic, and interactions with general traffic. Time-dependent passenger arrivals capture typical pre- and post-event surges. In combination with Viswalk, passenger movements within stations near venues are simulated, including platform crowding, boarding processes, and their impact on dwell times. 

KPIs such as occupancy, headway adherence, delays, and throughput support the optimization of timetables, fleet sizing, and station layouts, ensuring reliable service under peak event conditions.