2019/12/31 by Giacomo Albi, Emiliano Cristiani, Lorenzo Pareschi +2 · 25 citations
Engineering · Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · Psychology · #Artificial intelligence #Computer science #Control (management) #Dynamics (music) #Evacuation and Crowd Dynamics #Focus (optics) #Geography #Herding #Natural (archaeology) #Opinion Dynamics and Social Influence #Physics #Psychology #Traffic control and management #math.OC #physics.soc-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1007/978-3-030-50450-2_8
published in Modeling and simulation in science, engineering & technology, 159-197 · arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1504.04064
openalex publication_date 2020/01/01 · arxiv created 2020/03/18 · arxiv updated 2021/05/25 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
In this survey we consider mathematical models and methods recently developed to control crowd dynamics, with particular emphasis on egressing pedestrians. We focus on two control strategies: The first one consists in using special agents, called leaders, to steer the crowd towards the desired direction. Leaders can be either hidden in the crowd or recognizable as such. This strategy heavily relies on the power of the social influence (herding effect), namely the natural tendency of people to follow group mates in situations of emergency or doubt. The second one consists in modify the surrounding environment by adding in the walking area multiple obstacles optimally placed and shaped. The aim of the obstacles is to naturally force people to behave as desired. Both control strategies discussed in this paper aim at reducing as much as possible the intervention on the crowd. Ideally the natural behavior of people is kept, and people do not even realize they are being led by an external intelligence. Mathematical models are discussed at different scales of observation, showing how macroscopic (fluid-dynamic) models can be derived by mesoscopic (kinetic) models which, in turn, can be derived by microscopic (agent-based) models.