Introducing age-based parameters into simulations of crowd dymanics

Very few crowds consist of individuals who are exactly the same. Defining variables, such as age, and how they affect an individual¿s movement, could increase realism in simulations of crowd movement. In this paper, we present and discuss how age variations of individuals can be included in crowd simulations. Starting with the Helbing, Molnar, Farkas, and Vicsek model (HMFV), we modeled age differences by modifying the strength of the existing social forces. We created simulation scenarios with the varied strengths and used multiple approaches for validation, including experts¿ subjective validation and experimental validation via comparison of model predictions with observed crowd movements. The results indicated that individual characteristics such as age can be modeled by social forces. Future extensions of our work would be to include individuals, small subgroups, and/or large groups of people to model multicultural crowd behavior.