Estimating density limits for walking pedestrians keeping a safe interpersonal distancing

• Main Authors: I. Echeverría-Huarte, A. Garcimartín, R. C. Hidalgo, C. Martín-Gómez, I. Zuriguel
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Nature Publishing Group 2021-01-01
• Series: Scientific Reports
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-79454-0

Abstract With people trying to keep a safe distance from others due to the COVID-19 outbreak, the way in which pedestrians walk has completely changed since the pandemic broke out1,2. In this work, laboratory experiments demonstrate the effect of several variables—such as the pedestrian density, the walking speed and the prescribed safety distance—on the interpersonal distance established when people move within relatively dense crowds. Notably, we observe that the density should not be higher than 0.16 pedestrians per square meter (around 6 m2 per pedestrian) in order to guarantee an interpersonal distance of 1 m. Although the extrapolation of our findings to other more realistic scenarios is not straightforward, they can be used as a first approach to establish density restrictions in urban and architectonic spaces based on scientific evidence.