Modeling Urban Panic

Schneier is reporting that Arizona State University's Paul Torrens has been developing a computer simulation to model urban panic. "The goal of this project is to develop a reusable and behaviorally founded computer model of pedestrian movement and crowd behavior amid dense urban environments, to serve as a test-bed for experimentation." The simulation tests behaviors from how a crowd flees from a burning car to how a pathogen might be transmitted through a mobile pedestrian over time among others.

Comments

Yes but can it model...

[billius]

a zombie attack? And if so, can it compensate for the differences between slow-moving George Romero zombies and fast-moving British zombies?

Re:You need a simulation for this?

[evanbd]

Of course you do.

Any time you want to answer the question "What will happen to X in the event of Y?" you either need to try it, or you need a model. Your model ("crowd moves away") probably gives correct results, but not detailed ones. If you want more detailed results, with answers to more detailed questions (How fast? Which direction? How does it change with pedestrian density? How do obstacles matter?) then you need a better model.

If you want to improve pedestrian traffic, police response, crowd control... This model could be quite helpful.

Links to the Rendered Videos

[phobos13013]

Much more interesting than the Schneir description of the actual site in question. Here they have fully rendered videos from multiple vantages of the studies amongst other research topics of the professor.

Been there done that

[JustNiz]

My CS AI prof at University of Reading had done this about 15 years ago, following the tube train fire at Kings Cross, London.
He created a model of the station and passengers, programmed only about 6 simple rules into the movenent of each passenger, and found that the model pretty accurately recreated where they found the actual bodies in the station.

Re:I can answer one of these

[flabbergasted]

Ambrose Bierce defined it best in his "Devil's Dictionary"

riot n. A popular entertainment given to the military by innocent bystanders.

There's more than movement, too

[blueZ3]

Those people on the outside are pressing against the folks in the middle and people at the back are pressing forward. The nice stream shown doesn't appear to account for this, especially as none of the sims are crushed, trampled, or otherwise flattened in the mad rush to the door.

IRL, people on the outsides frantically push their way toward the exit, creating pressure on those in the center that frequently results in a crush of bodies that this model doesn't seem to model very well. If you've ever been in a situation where the crowd pressure to pass through a bottleneck is so strong that you can't move backward, hold still, or even effectively resist the rush, you know what I'm talking about.

This model seems to be a "in a perfect world, where the panicked crowd moves cooperatively and generally in an orderly fashion towards the exits" kind of model. It's hard to see how that's very useful in the context suggested (panic response).

Certianly interesting...

[Gat0r30y]

I wonder how this model can compensate for cultural differences. I was recently in China, where outside of major cities (Shanghai, Beijing) closer to the country (even in very large cities) there is no concept of waiting in line. It takes some getting used to, even after a month of acclimatizing I couldn't help but try to form a line, like i'm the one westerner who's going to show the 4 million people of Wuxi China how to wait in a line. How would crowds with that sort of cultural leaning move vs. say a very polite crowd where everyone tries to let other people go in front? How might these factors get paramaterized?

On another note the mall designed to get people to shop to death is about the scariest thing Ive ever heard of. After hearing of that I'm pretty sure this will end up being used for evil.

What about a dynamic environments...

[moncho]

This completely reminded me of the opening of the London Millennium Bridge in London (crossing the Thames) were the bridge (nicknamed the Wobbly bridge) began to sway due to a few pedestrians who, by happenstance, inadvertently stepped in the same direction at the same time, causing a slight sway which on the rebound caused a few more people to step into the same direction, causing further swaying, increasing the effect w/ every oscillation. This effect is known as Synchronous Lateral Excitation. The funny thing is that each step, even several in synchrony, have negligible effects on bridge stress models... it was that this particular sway happened in such a way that forced more pedestrians on the bridge to step INTO the direction of the sway, continuing until most everyone on the bridge (up to 2,000 pedestrians) were contributing energy to the sway. The aforementioned is an instance of an unexpected design flaw due to inadequate modeling, and one can always come up w/ such instances, but these are meant to be learned and avoided... not repeated.

Re:Is this really newsworthy?

[Prof.Phreak]

One use is finding bottlenecks in new construction or city planning. if a dirty bomb blows up in the middle of the city, what will cripple evacuation?

It's not something that can be done once and that's it. It's something where every new construction/change needs to be modeled. Even new technology (like cell phones) can change the crowd behavior.