Robust Design Optimization for Egressing Pedestrians in Unknown Environments

Abstract

In this paper, we deal with a size-variable group of pedestrians moving in a unknown confined environment and searching for an exit. Pedestrian dynamics are simulated by means of a recently introduced microscopic (agent-based) model, characterized by an exploration phase and an egress phase. First, we study the model to reveal the role of its main parameters and its qualitative properties. Second, we tackle a robust optimization problem by means of the Particle Swarm Optimization method, aiming at reducing the time-to-target by adding in the walking area multiple obstacles optimally placed and shaped. Robustness is sought against the number of people in the group, which is an uncertain quantity described by a random variable with given probability density distribution.

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Cited by in corpus (5)

• Mathematical models and methods for crowd dynamics control
• Fluctuations in pedestrian dynamics routing choices
• Well-posedness of a coupled system of Skorohod-like stochastic differential equations
• PDE-Constrained Optimization Models and Pseudospectral Methods for Multiscale Particle Dynamics
• Avalanches of choice: how stranger-to-stranger interactions shape crowd dynamics