Collective Dynamics

How a Game Theoretic Approach Can Minimize the Cost of Train Passenger Services: An Intermodal Competition between Rail and Road Transport

Tryson Yangailo — Thu, 17 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0200

Game theory models provide very powerful tools for evaluating strategies that are beneficial to both rail and road operators competing for passengers on parallel routes. This study examines how game theory can help rail operators who are incurring losses on passenger transport to identify strategies that can minimise costs, using the methodology of dual linear programming to analyse strategies. In identifying the best strategies for minimising costs for the railway operator, the best strategies for maximising profits for the road operators are also identified. The game model is set up between two passenger transport operators (rail and road) and is based on the income earned by the road operators from passengers. This study illustrates the following: how the strategies of the two competitors (rail and road) are determined; the formation of the payoff matrix and the presentation of the mathematical problem for the two competitors; and the results and verification of the best strategies for both competitors. The Leonid Hurwicz criterion was used to verify the optimal strategies.

Exploring the Dynamic Relationship between Pushing Behavior and Crowd Dynamics

Ezel Uesten, Jette Schumann, Anna Sieben — Fri, 29 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0200

Crowds, subjects of considerable complexity, have been extensively studied both as homogeneous entities and as collective sums of individual movements in various studies. However, crowd models, being grounded in physics, are limited in terms of incorporating psychological perspectives on individual behavior. Building upon the premise that crowd behavior is heterogeneous and dynamic, particularly in bottleneck scenarios, this study aims to explore the nuances of forward motion. Adopting the category system proposed by Lügering et al. (2022) (consisting the following categories: strong pushing, mild pushing, just walking, falling behind), this paper investigates the circumstances and locations where pushing or non-pushing behaviors arise, intensify, or cease within crowds approaching bottlenecks. The study utilized 14 video materials obtained from previous laboratory pedestrian experiments to examine the spatial characteristics of forward motion and pushing behavior in relation to corridor widths and varied motivational instructions. Two trained raters independently annotated these videos, achieving satisfactory inter-rater agreement (KALPHA = .65) , and a joint dataset was then created for each video. These videos consisted both high (7 videos) and low (7 videos) motivation scenarios. The importance of corridor width was also considered: four videos featured a 5.6m width, another four featured a 4.5m width, and the remaining videos displayed widths of 3.4m, 2.3m, and 1.2m twice. Our findings suggest a tendency for increased pushing behavior or an increase in the categories as individuals approach the bottleneck, regardless of the width of the corridor or the motivational instruction. Furthermore, non-pushing behaviors were predominantly observed in the areas farther away from the bottleneck. A noticeable trend was observed in high motivation scenarios, which generally exhibited more instances of pushing behavior. The effect of corridor width indicated that, in certain cases, pedestrians who push in wider corridors experience faster access to the bottleneck. However, this effect is less significant in narrower widths.

Pedestrian Crowd Management Experiments: A Data Guidance Paper

Mon, 08 May 2023 00:00:00 +0200

Understanding pedestrian dynamics and the interaction of pedestrians with their environment is crucial to the safe and comfortable design of pedestrian facilities. Experiments offer the opportunity to explore the influence of individual factors. In the context of the project CroMa (Crowd Management in transport infrastructures), experiments were conducted with about 1000 participants to test various physical and social psychological hypotheses focusing on people's behaviour at railway stations and crowd management measures. The following experiments were performed: i) Train Platform Experiment, ii) Crowd Management Experiment, iii) Single-File Experiment, iv) Personal Space Experiment, v) Boarding and Alighting Experiment, vi) Bottleneck Experiment and vii) Tiny Box Experiment. This paper describes the basic planning and implementation steps, outlines all experiments with parameters, geometries, applied sensor technologies and pre- and post-processing steps. All data can be found in the pedestrian dynamics data archive.