Project description
Managing crowds in public spaces
Crowd management is a difficult job. Large crowds gathering for an outdoor event and heavy pedestrian traffic are events of serious concern for officials tasked with managing public spaces. Existing methods rely on simulation technologies and require the measurement of simulation variables that are difficult to estimate. The EU-funded CrowdDNA project proposes a new technology based on innovative crowd simulation models. It facilitates predictions on the dynamics, behaviour and risk factors of high-density crowds, addressing the need for safe and comfortable mass events. The project suggests that the analysis of some specific macroscopic characteristics of a crowd such as its apparent motion can offer important information about its internal structure and allow the exact assessment of its state.
Objective
CrowdDNA is a radically new concept to assist public space operators in the management of crowds, i.e. mass event organization, heavy pedestrian traffic management, crowd movement analysis and decision support. CrowdDNA technology is based on a new generation of crowd simulation models, which are capable of predicting the dynamics, behaviour and risk factors of crowds of extreme density. The main idea behind CrowdDNA is that analysis of some specific macroscopic features of a crowd, such as its apparent motion (that can be easily measured in real mass events) can reveal a valuable information about the internal structure and provide a precise estimate of a crowd state. This challenges the existing paradigms in the field that rely on simulation technologies and require measuring the simulation variables to initialize it, such as density, counts or individual features which are each difficult to estimate. This vision raises one main scientific challenge, which can be summarized as the need for a deep understanding of the relations between the smallest scales of crowd behaviours (e.g. contact and pushes at the limb scale) and the largest ones up to the entire crowd. CrowdDNA is a first attempt to combine biomechanical and behavioural simulation in complex scenarios of interactions between many humans. It will revolutionize the practices of crowd management to answer the requirements of modern society on safety and comfort at mass events or in crowded transportation facilities. CrowdDNA builds the foundations of new research on crowds, and opens up new opportunities for studies on physical interaction across cognitive sciences and biomechanics, as well as robotics and autonomous vehicles for safe navigation among people.
Fields of science
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
RIA - Research and Innovation actionCoordinator
78153 Le Chesnay Cedex
France