Jake Desyllas, Elspeth Duxbury and Mike Batty have co-authored a paper published in the prestigious International Journal of Geographical Information Science. Titled The discrete dynamics of small-scale spatial events: agent-based models of mobility in carnivals and street parades, the paper explores the use of swarming agents to model pedestrian movement.

Jake Desyllas and Elsepth Duxbury are Partners at Intelligent Space Partnership. Michael Batty is the Director of the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis at UCL.

Abstract:

Small-scale spatial events are situations in which elements or objects vary in such a way that temporal dynamics are intrinsic to their representation and explanation. Some of the clearest examples involve local movement, from conventional traffic modeling to disaster evacuation where congestion, crowding, panic, and related safety issues are key features. We propose that such events can be simulated using new variants of pedestrian model, which embody ideas about how behaviour emerges from the accumulated interactions between small-scale objects. We present a model in which the event space is first explored by agents using ‘swarm intelligence’. Armed with information about the space, agents then move in unobstructed fashion to the event. Congestion and problems over safety are then resolved through introducing controls in an iterative fashion, rerunning the model until a ‘safe solution’ is reached. The model has been developed to simulate the effect of changing the route of the Notting Hill Carnival, an annual event held in west central London over two days in August each year. One of the key issues in using such simulation is how the process of modeling interacts with those who manage and control the event. As such, this changes the nature of the modeling problem from one where control and optimization is external to the model to one where it is intrinsic to the simulation.