Hybrid modelling and simulation of huge crowd over a hierarchical Grid architecture

The last decade has witnessed an explosion of the interest in technologies of large simulation with the rapid growth of both the complexity and the scale of problem domains. Modelling & simulation of crowd is a typical paradigm, especially when dealing with large crowd. On top of a hierarchical Grid simulation infrastructure, a simulation of evacuating tens of thousands of pedestrians in an urban area has been constructed. The simulation infrastructure can facilitate a large crowd simulation comprising models of different grains and various types in nature. A number of agent-based and computational models residing at two distinctive administrative domains operate together, which successfully presents the dynamics of the complex scenario at scales of both individual and crowd levels. Experimental results indicate that the proposed hybrid modelling & simulation approach can effectively cope with the size and complexity of a scenario involving a huge crowd. © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.