Guided crowd dynamics via modified social force model

Pedestrian dynamics is of great theoretical significance for strategy design of emergency evacuation. Modification of pedestrian dynamics based on the social force model is presented to better reflect pedestrians’ behavioral characteristics in emergency. Specifically, the modified model can be used for guided crowd dynamics in large-scale public places such as subway stations and stadiums. This guided crowd model is validated by explicitly comparing its density–speed and density–flow diagrams with fundamental diagrams. Some social phenomena such as gathering, balance and conflicts are clearly observed in simulation, which further illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed modeling method. Also, time delay for pedestrians with time-dependent desired velocities is observed and explained using the established model in this paper. Furthermore, this guided crowd model is applied to the simulation system of Beijing South Railway Station for predictive evacuation experiments.