Simulate pedestrian and crowd movement

Organizers of entertainment events face a wide range of challenges: food and beverage services, sanitation facilities, performers, the prevention of aggression and crime, and the general well-being of attendees. One additional aspect where PTV Vissim and PTV Viswalk can provide valuable support is capacity planning – both in space and time. 

This includes the capacity of access infrastructure such as roads and rail leading to the event area, parking facilities, and nearby stations, often under highly event-specific conditions. It also covers pedestrian movement within the event area, the capacity of parking entrances and exits, as well as security and ticket control points – taking into account both waiting times for attendees and the required space for queues. 

Further considerations include queues for food and beverages, movement through dense crowds, and finally the safe and efficient departure of attendees, both under normal and emergency conditions. In short, any element of ingress, circulation, and egress – especially where these overlap – can become a critical capacity constraint. 

Pedestrian flow simulation provides a structured way to analyze crowd movement under realistic peak and emergency conditions. PTV Viswalk supports detailed crowd simulation to evaluate bottleneck formation, queue development and high-density passenger flow across entry points, concourses, security checkpoints and boarding areas. Based on this analysis, ingress, egress and circulation concepts can be validated before opening or major event operation.  

Clear visual outputs from Vissim and Viswalk help align stakeholders and keep discussions focused and productive. 

For large public or commercial buildings, safe and efficient movement of people is essential for regulatory approval and long-term operational performance. Especially in cases where prescriptive regulations cannot be applied, a performance-based simulation approach can achieve an equivalent level of safety. 

Building evacuation simulation in PTV Viswalk tests spatial layouts under realistic occupancy scenarios before construction or renovation. PTV Viswalk also supports evacuation simulation and emergency evacuation simulation for everyday circulation as well as fire and safety scenarios. For fire scenarios, where available and required, results from FDS simulations can be imported, and the physiological effects on occupants are calculated according to the method developed by David Purser. 

Key performance indicators such as clearance times, density thresholds, and flow bottlenecks are visualized to reduce compliance risk and to improve occupant safety.  

PTV Viswalk simulates pedestrian flow using a social force-based behavioral model for area-based movement. Evacuation scenarios can incorporate blocked routes, phased evacuation strategies, reduced visibility conditions, and multimodal interactions with vehicles or public transport where relevant. This enables authorities and operators to test evacuation procedures and validate safety performance under realistic behavioral assumptions. 

Fire safety planning, in particular, often involves a large number of scenarios, as both potential threats and mitigation measures must be considered. In this context, the scenario manager in PTV Viswalk provides valuable support – not only by helping to define and organize scenarios, but also by managing results and enabling systematic comparison across scenarios. 

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