Pedestrian dynamics. Feedback control of crowd evacuation (Q2473312)

This book is dedicated to the developing pedestrian dynamic models that can be used in the control and investigation of crowd behaviour. Studies of crowd behaviour are concerned with evacuation strategies for different areas like airports, stadiums, theaters, buildings, and ships. A good evacuation system in case of emergency can prevent a catastrophic outcome. In Chapter 2 the development of the pedestrian evacuation dynamic system following from the traffic flow theory in 1-D space is considered. The background of traffic flow theory and a survey of the existing macroscopic mathematical models for single-line, 1-D space traffic flow is presented. The derivation of traffic flow theory is based on conservation of mass law, and the relationships between velocity and density. Exact and weak solutions to the scalar traffic flow and the concepts of shock wave, rarefaction wave, and admissibility of a solution are considered. In Chapter 3 a lot of macroscopic crowd dynamic models are presented. These models modify the 1-D traffic flow models so that a bidirectional control flow is possible. Chapter 4 presents numerical schemes that approximate the solutions of the hyperbolic, nonlinear, time-varying, partial differential equations that represent crowd models developed in previous chapters. Hyperbolic nature of dynamical equations, discontinuous solutions like shocks and rarefaction waves are considered. Chapter 5 provides a controller design for the equation model given in Chapter 2 using feedback linearization that guarantees the exponential stability if the roots of characteristic equation lie in the open left half of the complex plane. In Chapter 6 new intelligent evacuating control systems are discussed and computing technologies are combined with intelligent evacuation systems that increase crowd safety and management without changing the physical structure of the facility. The control evacuation systems provide better safety and management results than the information or advice evacuation strategies. Subway stations and airports are used as examples. Chapter 7 considers discretized feedback control of pedestrian evacuation which is a multi disciplinary problem. The matrix (7.12) given on p. 126 is wrong because it must be a three-diagonal matrix. In Chapter 8 a discretized optimal control method of steepest descent is analyzed. This method is used to compute the optimal control in piecewise constant manner. Chapter 9 considers distributed feedback control 1-D. This model is used for evacuation control. The model is similar to the 1-D traffic flow model and similar to the fluid flow and based on principle of conservation. The stability of the closed loop system is shown by analysis of the Lyapunov function. Chapter 10 investigates nonlinear feedback controllers for two different models representing evacuation dynamics in 2-D. The models are similar to the ones discussed in Chapter 9. Sufficient conditions for Lyapunov stability for distributed control are derived. Chapter 11 is dedicated to robust feedback control. The controller is designed using Lyapunov's direct method and requires the existence of known bounding functions and magnitudes of the uncertain term. This book is very interesting. It considers current themes about evacuation strategy. The theory bases on the analogy with air dynamical processes and uses modern mathematical methods, as Lyapunov's theory for the estimation of stability of control processes. This book may be very useful for scientists and postgraduate students who work in the area of control strategy evacuation.