QUANTITATIVE LIFE SCIENCES GUEST SEMINAR - Tuesday, 7 May @ 14h30

[Quantitative Life Sciences]

QUANTITATIVE LIFE SCIENCES GUEST SEMINAR

Tuesday, 7 May 2019 at 14:30,
ICTP, Central Area, 2nd floor, old SISSA building, via Beirut 2

Speaker: Alessandro Corbetta - Turbulence and Vortex dynamics group, 
Applied Physics at Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The 
Netherlands

Title:  Active flow of low-density pedestrian crowds

Abstract:
The dynamics of pedestrian crowds share deep connections with the 
statistical physics of active matter.
Pedestrians move following own will and objectives: this amounts in huge 
variability in the motion, observable even in diluted conditions. 
Despite such individual unpredictability, ensemble-level universal 
physical features emerge and encompass common and rare fluctuations of 
both the solo and the interacting dynamics. Reaching a quantitative 
understanding of these features is a major scientific challenge with 
deep societal impact, e.g. in the design of civil infrastructures or of 
crowd management measures.

We investigate from observational experiments held in real-life settings 
(stations, festivals, museums) and in diluted conditions statistical 
features of pedestrian motion. We leverage on datasets including 
millions of trajectories acquired with and without external influencing 
stimuli (i.e., crowd control measures, like signage or visual cues), via 
home-made high-fidelity tracking systems. On this basis, we quantify the 
PDFs of individual velocity, position, body rotation and 
mutual-contact-avoidance "social" forces - possibly in dependence on 
stimuli. We propose an active-Brownian particle model of the dynamics 
based on Langevin-like equations statistically quantitative.

This work is in collaboration with: J. Meeusen, C. Lee, A. Muntean, R. 
Benzi, F. Toschi

   Indico web page: http://indico.ictp.it/event/8942/

Everyone interested is most welcome to attend!

-- 
Erica Sarnataro
Group Secretary
Quantitative Life Sciences
The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP)
Trieste,  Italy
Tel. +39-040-2240623
www.ictp.it/research/qls.aspx
e-mail: qls at ictp.it