A configurable agent-based crowd model with generic behaviour effect representation mechanism

Most of the existing crowd models were designed for specific behaviours or scenarios. Significant modifications were often required to include new behaviours and new scenarios. This paper proposed an approach to develop a generic crowd model with the ability to incorporate different behaviours under different scenarios. At the higher level of the proposed crowd model, the agent-based modelling method was used to enable the individual heterogeneity. At the lower level, a unified mechanism to represent effects of different individual behaviours was introduced. A core formula with seven generic parameters (i.e. agent’s position, target’s position, behaviour angle, effect of base speed, agent factor, target factor, and distance factor) has been developed to form the basis of the unified mechanism. This paper also presented a Behaviour Library that consisted of a set of basic behaviours which were able to construct complex behaviours through their combinations. In order to demonstrate the capability of the model in various scenarios, the following simulations have been conducted and discussed: queuing at an exit, bi-directional pedestrian walk flow, evacuation in a building, and consensus decision making in a large group.