Walk Time Calculations for Indoors Routes

JonathanDandois

How are you all computing walk_time in your Indoors networks? Does Esri have a standard recommended calculation for this based on shape_length? If so, apologies, I couldn't find it through searching. 

It seems like Esri Network Analysis defaults to 5 km/hr. Has anyone worked on applying different walk_time calculations based on different mobility modes? for example 5 km/hr for "Walking" or 1.5 km/hr for a "Manual Wheelchair" (based on an arbitraty Google Scholar search, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1155/2012/753165

 

https://pro.arcgis.com/search/?q=walktime&collection=help&product=arcgis-pro&version=pro3.4&language=en

 

JasonHineEsri

Hi @JonathanDandois -- thanks for your questions. Seems like you're most interested in what others in the community are doing, but here's some info that you may find helpful:

• Q: Does Esri have a standard recommended calculation for [walk_time] based on shape_length?
  A: You correctly determined that Network Analyst uses a default walk_time of 5km/hour (3.1mi/hour). I'm not sure what reference was used to decide that that would be the default; could be that 5km/hour was a nice round number in the generally-agreed-upon range of 3 to 4 mph (4.2 to 6.4 km/h) for an average adult human walking speed. This study could be helpful; it gives a "usual" outdoor walking pace as 4.7 km/h (2.9mph).
  
  ArcGIS Indoors' network template comes with two travel modes "baked in": Walking and Wheelchair. Other travel modes (e.g., moving walkway, airport shuttle) can be added. An Indoors network applies different travel time factors for different indoor pathway types. These factors are defined in the network templates included with ArcGIS Pro under <install_dir>\Resources\Indoors\NetworkTemplates, and you can review the factors when viewing the Network Dataset properties, by looking under General > Summary. Scroll down in the Summary to where "traveltime" is mentioned and you should see the following logic:
  
  • Stairs (PATHWAY_TYPE 2): <pathway_LENGTH_3D_in_meters> * (60 min / 2350 meters) ==> 2.35km/h (about 47% of normal walking speed)
  • Other pathways: <pathway_LENGTH_3D_in_meters> * (60 min / 5000 meters) ==> 5km/h (normal walking speed)

There are other factors you can control, such as an elevator DELAY when generating Transitions features. You can also reshape stairway Transitions features (they're generated as vertical lines) so their LENGTH_3D values are more accurate for travel time calculations.

Calculating realistic indoor route travel times is a deep topic! If you want to get into the details, I'd recommend this tutorial on creating a network dataset -- it's for an outdoor network, but the properties and concepts it covers can also apply to indoor networks.