Seeking shade: an agent-based model to study shadow-focused pedestrian movement: Case study in Berlin

• An agent-based model to simulate pedestrian movement prioritizing shaded paths across the city of Berlin. • Agents maximize their exposure to shaded areas while maintaining a reasonable walking time. • Explores the trade-off between comfort, such as by staying cool by walking in the shade, and travel efficiency. • A total of ~25000 agents are simulated across Berlin to capture agents' emergent behavior. • The model uses real geographical datasets to generate shadows and detailed street information. Shade influences movement behavior of pedestrians, especially in urban extremes. Walking in the shade during urban heat conditions and strong sunlight helps regulate bodily temperatures and enhances thermal comfort for pedestrians. It is, therefore, apparent that pedestrians make micro-movement decisions that alter their usual path in favor of a slightly longer but shaded path. This study simulates pedestrian movement utilizing street shading information to investigate emergent micro-adjustment behaviors in overall route selection. The model utilizes shadow maps generated from Lidar data and incorporates detailed street-level data, including sidewalks, bike paths, driveways, on-street parking, and medians, which form the environment within which the agents operate. Each agent is assigned an origin–destination pair that helps it navigate the urban streetscape using simple rulesets and a cost function that prioritizes shadowed paths. The objective for agents is to maximize their exposure to shaded areas while maintaining a reasonable walking time, even if it requires a slightly longer path compared to a direct, unshaded route. The model is created in NetLogo and is scaled to simulate the movement of ∼25,000 agents across the city of Berlin, providing insights into the dynamics of pedestrian movement and the influence of shadows on route choice. The result suggests that overall, with only a 2% increase in their total journey time, the agents walked 12% more under the shadow on the sunniest day of the calendar.