High precision analysis of unidirectional pedestrian flow within the Hermes Project Jun Zhang a, *, Wolfram Klingsch a , Armin Seyfried b,c a Institute for Building Material Technology and Fire Safety Science, Wuppertal University, Pauluskirchstrasse 11, 42285,Wuppertal, Germany b Computersimualtion for Fire Safety and Evacuation, Wuppertal University, Pauluskirchstrasse 11, 42285,Wuppertal, Germany c Jülich Supercomupting Center, Forschungszentrum Jülich Gmbh, 52425 Jülich, Germany Abstract The aim of the Hermes project is the development of a computer simulation based on evacuation assistant to support security services in case of emergency in complex buildings and thus to improve safety at mass events. One goal of the project is to build and to calibrate models for pedestrian dynamics specifically designed for forecasting the emergency egress of large crowds faster than real-time. In this contribution, we give an overview of the project and its experimental results of unidirectional flow in a corridor. Trajectories of all pedestrians are analyzed with different measurement methods. The data will be used for model calibration. Keywords: Fundamental diagram; Pedestrian flow; Pedestrian experiment; 1. Introduction With increasing urbanization, more and more emergency incidents such as fire, terrorist attacks etc occur. Meanwhile, multifunctional building structures in combination with a wide range of large-scale public events present new challenges for the quality of security concepts. Prescriptive construction and planning regulations ensure in general that in case of an emergency every related person is able to leave the danger zone quickly by specifying e.g. minimal width and maximal length of escape routes. In the event of loss of rescue routes due to fire or other risks, however, dangerously high crowd densities and bottleneck effects can occur. To prevent such critical situations optimal crowd management needs accurate information about the current status. Usually in complex buildings the decision makers miss information like the number of people in the danger zone, how the loss of escape routes influences the evacuation time or where dangerous congestions with long waiting times will occur in the course of the evacuation. The evacuation assistant, developed by the Hermes project and outlined in this contribution will close this gap and support the decision makers in actual danger situations, to decide a successful evacuations strategy and to deploy the security staff optimally. The ESPRIT arena in Düsseldorf (Germany) provides a venue for testing the evacuation assistant. The example of this multifunctional arena with a capacity of 60,000 visitors will show how crowds of people at large events can be guided – also considering the current risk situation. A test system of the assistant will be installed in 2011. Fig. 1 shows the layout of the evacuation assistant. Using automated counting of persons at entrances and doors the present position of people in the building is delivered to the decision makers and the simulation core. The safety * Corresponding author. Tel.: +49 202 439 4241; fax: +49 202 82560. E-mail address: jun.zhang@uni-wuppertal.de