Some Indications on how to Calibrate the Social Force Model of Pedestrian Dynamics

The Social Force Model of pedestrian dynamics is formulated in a way that a) most of its parameters do not have an immediate interpretation, b) often one single parameter has an impact on many aspects of walking behavior and c) a certain aspect of walking behavior results from the values of more than one parameter. This makes calibration difficult. The aim of this paper is to give practitioners an indication of how to proceed in the calibration process. For this by analytical transformations the parameters of the Social Force Model are related to real properties that have a clear and immediate meaning and which are also highly relevant result properties of a simulation: extent and clearance time of a queue, respectively maximum density and capacity flow. The theory for this is presented as well. As a side effect it can give a deeper understanding of the model for everyone interested in theoretical aspects.