Disease contagion models coupled to crowd motion and mesh-free simulation

TL;DR

This paper develops a coupled kinetic and contagion model to simulate disease spread in pedestrian crowds, incorporating crowd motion, contact times, and complex environments, validated through mesh-free particle simulations.

Contribution

It introduces a novel coupled kinetic-contagion model with hydrodynamic approximations and mesh-free simulation methods for pedestrian disease spread.

Findings

Model captures influence of crowd dynamics on infection spread.

Simulations demonstrate effects of obstacles and flow directions.

Hydrodynamic approximation enables efficient large-scale simulations.

Abstract

Modeling and simulation of disease spreading in pedestrian crowds has been recently become a topic of increasing relevance. In this paper, we consider the influence of the crowd motion in a complex dynamical environment on the course of infection of the pedestrians. To model the pedestrian dynamics we consider a kinetic equation for multi-group pedestrian flow based on a social force model coupled with an Eikonal equation. This model is coupled with a non-local SEIS contagion model for disease spread, where besides the description of local contacts also the influence of contact times has been modelled. Hydrodynamic approximations of the coupled system are derived. Finally, simulations of the hydrodynamic model are carried out using a mesh-free particle method. Different numerical test cases are investigated including uni- and bi-directional flow in a passage with and without obstacles.