Constrained Linear Movement Model (CALM): Simulation of passenger movement in airplanes

TL;DR

This paper introduces CALM, a new simulation model for passenger movement in airplanes that is significantly faster than existing models, enabling real-time analysis during emergencies.

Contribution

CALM is a novel, efficient model specifically designed for constrained linear spaces like aircraft, overcoming the speed limitations of previous social force models.

Findings

CALM achieves two orders of magnitude speed improvement over SPED.

CALM produces realistic passenger movement simulations.

The model is suitable for real-time decision support during emergencies.

Abstract

Pedestrian dynamics models the walking movement of individuals in a crowd. It has recently been used in the analysis of procedures to reduce the risk of disease spread in airplanes, relying on the SPED model. This is a social force model inspired by molecular dynamics; pedestrians are treated as point particles, and their trajectories are determined in a simulation. A parameter sweep is performed to address uncertainties in human behavior, which requires a large number of simulations. The SPED model's slow speed is a bottleneck to performing a large parameter sweep. This is a severe impediment to delivering real-time results, which are often required in the course of decision meetings, especially during emergencies. We propose a new model, called CALM, to remove this limitation. It is designed to simulate a crowd's movement in constrained linear passageways, such as inside an aircraft. We show that CALM yields realistic results while improving performance by two orders of magnitude over the SPED model.