A Decision Support System for Crowd Control Using Agent-Based Modeling and Simulation

Crowd control has been one of the important responsibilities for law enforcement officers. Whether a crowdis formed for political reasons or sporting events, they can turn to be violent, disrupting public peace/order and damaging properties in a public place. Effective and efficient crowd control tactics can keep the safety of both the innocent public and the crowd who are involved with (violent) collective behaviours. In order to devise and test such tactics, a decision support system called SimCrowd Control has been developed using the technique of agent-based modeling and simulation (ABMS). The system employs a realistic crowd model developed based on social science research studies. At the early stage of the SimCrowd Control system, simple crowd control tactics were tested against the crowd model by simulating the Vancouver Stanley Cup Riot which happened in 2011. The limitations of the current system and future plans are discussed.