Comparing the complexity of wayfinding tasks in built environments

Wayfinding is a basic activity that people do throughout their lives as the y navigate from one place to another. Many theories of spatial cognition ha ve been developed to account for this behavior. However, most of the comput ational models focus on knowledge representation (for example, cognitive ma ps) and do not consider the process of how people structure wayfinding task s and space. in this paper we present a computational method to compare the complexity of wayfinding tasks in built environments. As a measure for suc h complexity, we use a simple wayfinding model that consists of two critica l elements: choices and clues. We show that elements of people's perception and cognition can be used to determine the elements of the wayfinding mode l and, therefore, to compare the complexity of wayfinding tasks in built en vironments. A case study of wayfinding in airports demonstrates the applica bility of the method. The integration of this method into the computational design process of built environments will help to identify architectural p roblems with regard to wayfinding prior to construction.