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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.
The simulation tests behaviors from how a crowd flees from a burning car
Hmmm... my guess is AWAY from the burning car.
a zombie attack? And if so, can it compensate for the differences between slow-moving George Romero zombies and fast-moving British zombies?
didn't they do model this already in the Grand Theft Auto series?
step a. pedestrian looks at event.
step b. pedestrian throws hands in air.
step c. pedestrian runs away.
step d. pedestrian gets winded, approximately 1/2 block from event.
step e. pedestrian forgets event.
step f. pedestrian walks around aimlessly.
step g. (sometimes) pedestrian's head explodes, becomes event triggering new step a.
seemed pretty darn realistic to me.
5) identify, if possible, the tell-tale signs of a peaceful crowd about to metamorphosize into a hellish mob;
Riot police. I've seen several demonstrations turn violent, and every single time it was preceded by riot police either attacking people (I've seen Metropolitan Police TSG hit a pregnant woman for talking back to them), herding people into an enclosed space and beating those who try and get out or baton charging a peaceful crowd.*
*This is not to say the police cause all riots, but they're certainly a factor in at least some of them.
If you haven't made a developer cry, you've wasted a day.
How can you have an urban panic without modeling a big, gray, atomic-breathed monster? Are they gonna CGI him, or Tron in some guy in a suit? :D
I didn't think the house band in Hell would play this badly.
when Hollywood has done several studies on fleeing citizens already?
"We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers." Carl Sagan
... can it predict how a crowd in Times Square will flee from the goatse guy being displayed on the jumbotron?
Trolling is a art,
All you have to do is knock out the west coast's WoW access on a saturday and wait.
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.
...and it should be known by now
I welcome our new Second Foundation overlords!
Hey! Get that Mule out of here!
Veritas patesco per quaestio questio. Truth is revealed through questions.
The demo they show of the modeler shows scenarios where the subjects want to get to some place. That's neat and all, but in a panic, people aren't trying to get TO some place, they are trying to get AWAY from some place.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
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.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
The included link is for a blog that links to a blog which links to the actual website: http://www.geosimulation.org/crowds/
with a CPU, a GPU, a PPU, a P'PU, a SAPU, a DIADRPU[TM], a TBNPU, and a CULCAOPU
* Central Processing Unit
* Graphics Processing Unit
* Physics Processing Unit
* Panic Processing Unit
* Sexual Arousal Processing Unit
* DRM Infringement Attempt Detection and Reporting Processing Unit(R)
* Terabit Network Processing Unit
* Computer Upgrade Loan Consolidation Assistance Offer Processing Unit
The link in the summary doesn't link to Dr. Torrens' actual research, but a blog about it. Here's the research's website: http://www.geosimulation.org/crowds/
So will it be able to simulate a anthrax covered minivan with seven free Wii systems in the trunk? Seems impossibly complex to me.
They should remember that sometimes it's cheaper to do experiments in real life.
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).
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to the research. Even better, the ASU press release went out seven months ago.
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.
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
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.
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.
"If anything can go wrong, it will." - Murphy