Indicators of pedestrian accessibility and their evaluation using the Social Force Model parameters in urban intersections

The growing interest in making pedestrian environments and their road infrastructure suitable for all types of users has contributed to the development of different methods that allow us to assess the accessibility of the public spaces. This with the purpose of integrate the elements of urban design and the management of pedestrian mobility, to achieve an inclusive, accessible, and fair society. In this context, the article seeks to study in depth the different methods established to identify the determining indicators of accessibility and their way of representing them, as well as the surroundings for pedestrian mobility, by using the parameters of the Social Force model in a microsimultaion. To validate and test the correct characterization of the accessibility qualitative indicators and the influence of the parameters on the representation of the reality, an urban intersection, and its mobility ecosystem in the metropolitan area of the district of Lima have been used as a practical case, specifically in the area near the Rebagliati Hospital. The results indicate that the most influential parameters are Tau and Lambda, since in this scenario the time variation is 3.1%, showing its influence on the behavior of pedestrians when transiting at the intersection. Furthermore, the investigation shows that indicators of mobility and comfort such as crossing safety or presence of obstacles can be best represented by parameters like side_preference, ASocIsco, BSocIsoc, Tau y Lambda. However, the simulation of the indicators of accessibility will be complemented by the assignment of vehicular and pedestrian routes, as well as the construction of the model itself, especially those indicators that are physical variables such as the slope, and environmental indicators like the index of trees or availability of crosswalks.