Vadere: An open-source simulation framework to promote interdisciplinary
  understanding

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Abstract

Pedestrian dynamics is an interdisciplinary field of research. Psychologists, sociologists, traffic engineers, physicists, mathematicians and computer scientists all strive to understand the dynamics of a moving crowd. In principle, computer simulations offer means to further this understanding. Yet, unlike for many classic dynamical systems in physics, there is no universally accepted locomotion model for crowd dynamics. On the contrary, a multitude of approaches, with very different characteristics, compete. Often only the experts in one special model type are able to assess the consequences these characteristics have on a simulation study. Therefore, scientists from all disciplines who wish to use simulations to analyze pedestrian dynamics need a tool to compare competing approaches. Developers, too, would profit from an easy way to get insight into an alternative modeling ansatz. Vadere meets this interdisciplinary demand by offering an open-source simulation framework that is lightweight in its approach and in its user interface while offering pre-implemented versions of the most widely spread models.

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Is Open Access

The Walking Behaviour of Pedestrian Social Groups and Its Impact on Crowd Dynamics

Mehdi Moussaïd, Niriaska Perozo, Simon Garnier … (2010)

Human crowd motion is mainly driven by self-organized processes based on local interactions among pedestrians. While most studies of crowd behaviour consider only interactions among isolated individuals, it turns out that up to 70% of people in a crowd are actually moving in groups, such as friends, couples, or families walking together. These groups constitute medium-scale aggregated structures and their impact on crowd dynamics is still largely unknown. In this work, we analyze the motion of approximately 1500 pedestrian groups under natural condition, and show that social interactions among group members generate typical group walking patterns that influence crowd dynamics. At low density, group members tend to walk side by side, forming a line perpendicular to the walking direction. As the density increases, however, the linear walking formation is bent forward, turning it into a V-like pattern. These spatial patterns can be well described by a model based on social communication between group members. We show that the V-like walking pattern facilitates social interactions within the group, but reduces the flow because of its “non-aerodynamic” shape. Therefore, when crowd density increases, the group organization results from a trade-off between walking faster and facilitating social exchange. These insights demonstrate that crowd dynamics is not only determined by physical constraints induced by other pedestrians and the environment, but also significantly by communicative, social interactions among individuals.