Efficient and validated simulation of crowds for an evacuation assistant

ABSTRACT To improve safety at mass events, an evacuation assistant that supports security services in case of emergencies is developed. One central aspect is forecasting the emergency egress of large crowds in complex buildings. This requires realistic models of pedestrian dynamics that can be simulated faster than real‐time by using methods applied in high performance computing. We give an overview of the project and present the actual results. We also describe the modeling approaches used thereby focusing on the runtime optimization and parallelization concepts. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. To improve safety at mass events, an evacuation assistant that supports security services in case of emergencies is developed. One central aspect is forecasting the emergency egress of large crowds in complex buildings. This requires realistic models of pedestrian dynamics that can be simulated faster than real‐time by using methods applied in highperformance computing. The results in terms of level of services and congestion areas are presented to the decision makers via a web interface.