The Dynamics of Crowds

Crowds pose an interesting example of a complex system in which emergent behaviour is observed out of the interaction of many individual agents. This behaviour can be very important in the safe design of sports and other stadia, especially in the case of possible emergency situations. For this reason crowd dynamics is of great interest to architects. The purpose of this project is to review the current literature on crowd dynamics and to look at some simulations of different types of crowd behaviour in certain specific situations namely: the meeting of two crowds in a 'scramble crossing', the motion of a crowd though an exit and the response of a crowd to an emergency (such as a fire). The student will implement a differential equation model of the crowd crossing problem. In particular, they will study the emergent behaviour that arises in the scramble crossing problem and see how this depends on various parameters relating to the individual actions of the members of the crowd. Declaration: I hereby certify that the work in this document is my own, unless otherwise referenced.