Crowd modelling
The design of public space requires a deep understanding of the way large numbers of people move. Of particular importance are their dynamical interactions and the resulting collective behaviour. This is a key issue not only in designing e.g. railway stations, airports, but also in ensuring the safety of crowds at large public events.
However, the modelling and computation of such groups of people is still in its infancy. In principle, there are two main approaches to modelling crowds: as an interacting particle system (microscopic) or as a PDE for the crowd density (macroscopic).
Adrian Muntean and his collaborators develop and study models in a measure-theoretical framework, which incorporates the micro- and macroscopic views as special cases. Their emphasis is on the influence of walls and obstacles (boundary conditions); anisotropy (people do not perceive their surroundings equally well in all directions); and two-scale effects (leader-group interaction). The research started off at CASA (Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands) and continues now at the Karlstad University, Sweden. The main results are reported in the PhD theses by Joep Evers (2015) and by Alessandro Corbetta (2016), as well as in the MSc thesis by Omar Richardson (2016).
For students interested in writing a BSc-thesis in this direction, click here.