Vendredi 15 novembre 2024 à 11h00 / salle des séminaires IRPHE
Abstract: The dynamics of human crowds is a paramount example of active matter physics with outstanding societal relevance [1]. Understanding and predicting the dynamics of human crowds is key to our daily comfort and safety and efficiency when moving in crowded urban areas. On the basis of a vast collection of experimental recordings, of highly space- and time-accurate trajectories of single individuals in (dense) crowds, we discuss quantitative models capable of explaining and predicting, at a statistical level, the dynamics of human crowds in simple flow configurations [2]. In this talk, we will start by reviewing the basic phenomenology of human crowds, along with a discussion of the simple physics-based models formulated on the basis of Langevin equations and path integrals. Finally, we discuss the most generic phenomenology of human crowd flows and we present a model, based on the coupled dynamics of slow and fast variables, capable of quantitatively describing the behaviour of single individuals in a crowd under very general flow conditions. This model can be used as a framework to infer physics-based models from data.
[1] Corbetta, A. and Toschi, F., 2023. Physics of Human Crowds. Annual Review of Condensed Matter Physics, 14.
[2] https://crowdflow.phys.tue.nl/