Recent Advances in Crowd Movement Space Design and Control using Crowd Simulation

Abstract

Crowd congestion causes accidents and sometimes leads to hundreds of injuries and deaths. To mitigate crowd congestion, we could design a space where the pedestrians can move smoothly, or intervene and control the crowd movement. Recently, computer simulation is often used to determine optimal spatial design and crowd control. The simulation methods of crowd movement are well organized because it has been an active area of research since the 1990s to understand crowd dynamics. On the other hand, methods and knowledge of spatial design and crowd control are not well organized, because research topics have recently become more active, and the knowledge is distributed among artificial intelligence, information processing, traffic engineering, civil engineering, architecture, physics, and more. The purpose of this paper is to summarize the research trends in spatial design and crowd control from the viewpoint of crowd simulation and optimization, which are often discussed in the field of artificial intelligence. We first introduce the evaluation indices of crowd movement in terms of efficiency and safety. Then, we explain the current findings on spatial design and categorize the methods of crowd control, ordered by the level of pedestrian behavior. In the end, the challenges and approaches are discussed based on the previous research.