A coupled prediction-correction Hughes' model for congested crowd motion

Abstract

In this work, we introduce a new macroscopic model for crowd motion inspired by the celebrated Hughes' model \cite{Hughes2002, Hughes2003}, which couples a nonlinear conservation law for the pedestrian density with an Eikonal equation describing the shortest path to the target. Our approach can be viewed both as a modification of Hughes' original formulation and as a refinement of the prediction-correction framework proposed in the recent work \cite{ennaji2023prediction}. The resulting model incorporates anticipatory behavior and dynamic route adjustment, offering a more realistic representation of crowd dynamics in complex environments. We present the mathematical formulation of the model, discuss its well-posedness properties, and illustrate its qualitative behavior through numerical simulations. Ultimately, we show, at least from a numerical perspective, that this variant provides a promising avenue towards establishing the well-posedness of the classical Hughes' model, which has remained a challenging open problem for a long time.