Multiscale Simulation of Pedestrians for Efficient Predictive Modeling in Large Events
Mohcine Chraibi and Bernard Steffen
The Hermes project [1] demonstrated the usefulness of on site predictive simulations of probable evacuation scenarios for security personnel. However, the hardware needed was prohibitively expensive [2]. The present paper shows that a multiscale approach can perform the simulation in a fraction of time without loss of useful information. The main problem is the correct passing of agents from a coarse scale model to a fine scale model, here from a CA model to a force based model. This will be achieved by inserting agents into the force based model at positions and speeds optimized for smooth walking either by a priori information or using Voronoi cells. The resulting model is easily parallelised using OpenMP, achieving reasonable efficiency.
We also show how a CA method can be modified to address the problem better than standard CA, too. However, this approach needs further development and calibration to be reliable.
Keywords: Cellular automata, modeling, pedestrian dynamics