Modeling crowd behavior in a theater

Abstract

To manage emergencies, it is useful to be able to understand how crowds behave in case of incidents. We modeled, by means of Markovian Agents, the behavior of a crowd in a theater to evaluate the effects of a potentially catastrophic situation in a constrained space. The chosen modeling technique showed to be well fit to help and evaluate, given the nature of a space with significant obstacles and densely occupied by people, what kind of actions should be taken in advance to mitigate the damage in case of problems.