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For event organizers, predicting the highly complex dynamics within large crowds can be an unenviable task. But new computer-modelling research, which treats people as decision-makers rather than passive particles, could help authorities to identify where crowds could become dangerous.
Crowds display a wide variety of behaviours that arise spontaneously from the collective motion of unconnected individuals. For example, people walking in opposite directions along a single passageway tend automatically to divide up into distinct lanes. Then, as the density of pedestrians increases, this smooth motion starts to break down, eventually leading to highly fluctuating motion. On occasion, extreme crowd turbulence has led to fatal crushes, such as the tragic accident at the Love Parade festival in Duisburg, Germany, last year, which left 21 people dead.
Associate Creative Director at bloomfield knoble