Ryosuke Yano
Martin Kröger- 1 Tokio Marine dR Co Ltd, Tokyo, Japan
- 2 Interface Physics, Department of Materials, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
Editorial on the Research Topic
Innovative approaches to pedestrian dynamics: experiments and mathematical models
This Research Topic, Innovative Approaches to Pedestrian Dynamics: Experiments and Mathematical Models, brings together contributions that exemplify the current state of research in the study of human and animal mobility, with a focus on bridging theoretical advances, computational techniques, and practical applications. The Research Topic underscores the growing interdisciplinarity of pedestrian dynamics, a field that lies at the crossroads of applied mathematics, physics, engineering, computer science, and behavioral studies. Several contributions expand the repertoire of mathematical models for collective dynamics and deepen our understanding of how temporal and environmental factors modulate collective behavior. For reference, a brief review of previous studies of pedestrian dynamics, in which experimental study is excluded, is summarized in Table 1.
Table 1. Review of studies of pedestrian dynamics.
Recent advances in modeling pedestrian and crowd dynamics emphasize the importance of multi-scale and data-driven approaches. Within the present issue, Horiai et al. have demonstrated that large-scale evacuation scenarios, such as tsunami responses, can be efficiently managed using macroscopic traffic-flow optimization based on zonal macroscopic fundamental diagrams, which help distribute pedestrians across multiple safe routes and alleviate congestion. Complementary to these macroscopic formulations, hybrid models coupling microscopic and mesoscopic descriptions capture how local behavioral factors, such as fear contagion, influence collective motion and evacuation efficiency in heterogeneous environments, c. f., Perepelitsa and Quaini. Statistical and computational approaches by Stock et al. combining mean-field theory and Monte Carlo simulations have further elucidated the dynamics of multiple interacting species of agents, revealing emergent transitions between Gaussian-like spatial distributions under varying crowd densities.
With the growing availability of real-world data, vision-based pedestrian tracking and social-force inference methods have emerged as valuable tools for connecting theoretical models to observable behaviors, enabling quantitative assessments of interaction forces and trajectory prediction in complex environments, as shown by Zhu. At a broader scale, hydrodynamic models of collective behavior incorporating time delays and obstacle potentials have provided new insights through the work by Zheng et al. into alignment, obstacle avoidance, and the onset of flocking or dispersal phenomena. Similarly, nonlocal advection systems for competing biological species that include delayed resource recovery offer a biologically grounded framework for studying population coexistence and spatial segregation under realistic constraints, see Zeng et al.. Finally, cross-species analyses by Ishikawa et al. of movement trajectories reveal universal statistical regularities in animal and human mobility, characterized by scaling relationships between enclosed area and trajectory length. These findings suggest a transition from two-dimensional to one-dimensional movement patterns depending on environmental and social constraints, highlighting a unifying geometric principle across taxa.
Collectively, the articles in this issue advance the field of pedestrian dynamics along three interconnected axes: the refinement of theoretical and mathematical foundations, the integration of data-driven and hybrid modeling techniques, and the application of these methods to real-world challenges of safety, efficiency, and resilience. The issue reaffirms the dual identity of pedestrian dynamics as both a fertile ground for exploring fundamental questions of collective behavior and a domain of urgent societal importance.
Author contributions
RY: Conceptualization, Writing – review and editing, Writing – original draft. MK: Conceptualization, Writing – review and editing.
Funding
The author(s) declare that no financial support was received for the research and/or publication of this article.
Conflict of interest
Author RY was employed by Tokio Marine dR Co Ltd.
The remaining author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
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Keywords: hybrid modeling and simulation, collective behavior and social movements, kinetic theory, social force model, evacuation action plan, crowd dynamics, pedestrian dynamic model
Citation: Yano R and Kröger M (2025) Editorial: Innovative approaches to pedestrian dynamics: experiments and mathematical models. Front. Phys. 13:1723607. doi: 10.3389/fphy.2025.1723607
Received: 12 October 2025; Accepted: 16 October 2025;
Published: 24 October 2025.
Edited and reviewed by:
Matjaž Perc, University of Maribor, SloveniaCopyright © 2025 Yano and Kröger. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Ryosuke Yano, cnlvc3VrZS55YW5vQHRva2lvLWRyLmNvLmpw