Walking Patterns of Elderly in a Peruvian Public Space
This exploratory study seeks to determine the walking patterns of the elderly, who walk with the help of sticks, wheelchairs and walkers during their leisure time in a park in Lima.On average, 6% of the elderly use walkers, 4% wheelchairs, 18% sticks and 72% walk alone without any help.Also, male mean speed would be 15% higher than the female mean speed and for all the elderly, in thirty years, the speed could decrease by around 40% when the elderly are 90 years old.The mean speed of the elderly using wheelchairs would be 0.89 m/s, value that is higher than the mean speed obtained with sticks and walkers.The average walking speed would be a function of group size, whose proportion follows a truncated Poisson distribution.The patterns of spatial organization for the elderly walking without help, with wheelchairs and sticks would be similar to those found in studies that considered adults under low and median levels of density.In the case of the elderly waking with walkers, they try to keep a straight line due to their low travel speed.On the other hand, the main factors that affect elderly movement are slippery floor, irregular materials used on the floor and small differences of level between surfaces.The elderly under 70 years old could walk faster when crossing the street, but when the age is higher majority of them could not walk faster due to their physical limitations.It is important to know the walking pattern of the elderly in order to give them the opportunity of being included in the society through a better design of the public space, specially, in developing countries.At the same time, this knowledge is essential to improve the current pedestrian micro simulators.
elderly walking patterns public space peru
Felix Cabrera Frank Mu(n)oz Cristina Perez
Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru Av.Universitaria 1801, Lima 32, Peru
国际会议
The 8th International Conference on Pedestrian and Evacuation Dynamics (第八届行人与疏散动力学国际学术会议)
合肥
英文
12-17
2016-10-17（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）