Microsimulations of Arching, Clogging, and Bursty Exit Phenomena in Crowd Dynamics

Abstract

We present in this paper the behavior of an artificial agent who is a member of a crowd. The behavior is based on the social comparison theory, as well as the trajectory mapping towards an agent's goal considering the agent's field of vision. The crowd of artificial agents were able to exhibit arching, clogging, and bursty exit rates. We were also able to observe a new phenomenon we called double arching, which happens towards the end of the simulation, and whose onset is exhibited by a "calm" density graph within the exit passage. The density graph is usually bursty at this area. Because of these exhibited phenomena, we can use these agents with high confidence to perform microsimulation studies for modeling the behavior of humans and objects in very realistic ways.