Moving in a crowd: human perception as a multiscale process

TL;DR

This paper proposes a multiscale model of pedestrian behavior that combines microscopic and macroscopic effects to better understand how human perception influences crowd dynamics.

Contribution

It introduces a dual microscopic/macroscopic modeling approach to capture the multiscale nature of human perception in crowd movement.

Findings

The model effectively captures pedestrian interactions and crowd behavior.

Simulations show the importance of perception in crowd dynamics.

Qualitative analysis supports the multiscale modeling approach.

Abstract

The strategic behaviour of pedestrians is largely determined by how they perceive and react to neighbouring people. This issue is addressed in this paper by a model which combines, in a time and space-dependent way, discrete and continuous effects of pedestrian interactions. Numerical simulations and qualitative analysis suggest that human perception, and its impact on crowd dynamics, can be effectively modelled as a multiscale process based on a dual microscopic/macroscopic representation of groups of agents.