The pedestrian’s perspective during their walk in a built environment: joint application of level of service and pedestrian fundamental diagram

Abstract

Movement through walking is an everyday and even trivial activity, but its execution can significantly influence both our quality of life and personal safety. Hence, numerous studies and biases exist, including the Level of Service (LOS) and the Pedestrian Fundamental Diagram (PFD). These concepts present different perspectives on the fluidity of human movement concerning population density, with LOS focusing on people's perception, while PFD concentrates on determining changes in walking speed. These approaches are typically employed separately. In this work, using an essentially exploratory methodology, these two perspectives for a specific situation will be combined, allowing us to verify both results together and comparatively. It was observed that the optimal point of maximum fluidity indicated by the PFD is, from the perspective of LOS, in an area perceived as very bad. Therefore, if designers of built environments consider only the PFD in their approaches, more stressful environments will be designed for occupants. Thus, this paper contributes by presenting this unconventional approach to verify the adequacy of ergodesign in the built environment, bringing some ethical points to the discussion.