Improving Flow Rate with Funnel-shaped Space Design using Crowd Simulation for Large Crowds

Sammanfattning: Crowd simulation is a technique used to model real people as agents in a computer-generated environment. Generating simulated crowds can help the research process of testing with agents in multiple scenarios without having to use real people. The flow of large crowds in different space-designs vary and this thesis will examine flow rates in funnel-shaped constructions and bottleneck constructions with the help of computer-generated crowd simulations. These flows can impact individuals to the extent where they are hurt by misdirected forces. Two different variables are defined for the funnel-shaped construction: corridor width and funnel-angle. For the bottleneck construction, there is only a corridor width property. Agents moving through an environment only move in one direction with no possibilities of a headon collision. Timing the agents that walk through the environments and looking at the forces they form shows that the funnels had a better flow and took less time than the bottlenecks. When looking at the different widths of the corridor the wider constructions was faster than all of the narrower constructions except the case with the narrow 15-degree funnel that was faster than the wide bottleneck. Introducing a funnel-shaped construction shows an improvement of the flow rate where you get better results the lower the angles. Applications of the funnel-shaped construction can include urban planning and architecture for spaces that have a capacity for large crowds, where an improvement in flow rate can make the space safer in an evacuation.