The value of pedestrian planning and simulation in the design process : three themes as a pattern for pedestrian planning best practices in analysis and design.

In order to provide the greatest benefit to project design within the built environment, pedestrian planning and simulation is best placed to engage pedestrian issues early on in the design process. Engaging in pedestrian planning late in the design process, or not at all, leaves the designers, owners and operators potentially open to risk. Three design integration themes are described within this paper by example of engineering and planning project successes. These examples detail the design issues at hand, the techniques utilised to analyse the situation, the results and benefits of the pedestrian planning and analysis. In some of these projects, pedestrian simulations were incorporated early during the design phase, in others planning and simulation was engaged to demonstrate operational management techniques when substantial physical improvements were not possible. These are presented to demonstrate at a national level, pedestrian planning and simulation can be utilized to drive the design and engineering process, and to deliver infrastructure that is able to meet the needs of the owners, operators and primary users while enabling the opportunity for solutions that can appropriately balance the end user's needs with other competing constraints. (a) For the covering entry of this conference, please see ITRD abstract no. E216297.