Alethea Barbaro: Evacuations and Disasters: Modeling Stressed Crowds

Date: 2024-07-04

Time: 11:30 - 12:00

Speaker

Alethea Barbaro, TU Delft


Abstract

What would you do if you were at a crowded event, and all of a sudden, you hear people screaming? Would you start pushing? Would you run for the exits? We all hear about the tragic sequelae of such situations in the news, yet many mathematical models for pedestrian dynamics do not take into account the emotional component of these situations, instead focusing on physical components and constraints. In this talk, I will introduce an agent-based flocking model for crowd dynamics where agents have an emotional variable in addition to a position and velocity. This emotion level evolves in response to the emotions of nearby agents. I will detail the agent-based model, show simulations, and derive a corresponding kinetic equation.