Integrated modeling of crowd groups based on spatial distribution of members

An integrated framework supporting both leader-follower and leaderless groups is proposed. The concept of subgroup is supported so that chains of groups can exist. This allows to model complicated group relationships in crowd simulations. To model group related dynamics, rules are proposed. A detailed explanation of implementation of these rules is given. To validate the proposed framework, two sets of numerical experiments are conducted, using experimental data collected by previous researchers. In one set of experiments, small leader-follower groups without subgroups are considered. In the other set, groups are leaderless and can be small or large with zero or more subgroups. The impact of crowd groups on fundamental diagrams is also experimented. The conducted experiments indicate that the proposed framework can reproduce results that are quite comparable to practical values, thus the framework’s efficacy is validated within a certain range.