Turbo modelling

(updated  31st August 2007)

Keywords: Evacuation, simulations, simulating crowds, simulating behaviour, simulating people

Myriad is a general purpose suite of tools for pedestrian planning and design analysis from Crowd Dynamics Limited. At the moment Myriad is a prototype that we use in house for our consultancy projects around the world. Crowd Dynamics Ltd run a series of workshops to train delegates in appropriate modelling methods and techniques for pedestrian planning and crowd safety.

Designed to provide a rapid safety analysis we can turn store plans into a safety/risk analysis and/or an efficiency analysis in a few hours.

Our services are used to compare other pedestrian models for validity and applicability. Send us an email for further information. Our extensive training programmes and workshops have been attended by engineers around the world.

"I read your thesis and thought it was excellent, and a great contribution to the art. There should be many applications for your computer model....Wishing you great success with your endeavours. Sincerely, John Fruin" Dr. John J Fruin, Author of "Pedestrian planning and design" (8th May 2002)

"I have had a chance this weekend to review your report in detail.  My review confirms my initial impression of the report and the other examples on the website:  that Myriad is a major advance in spatial planning, in terms of its basic approach, graphic outputs to explain the results to other players, and the speed of response. " Colin Henson, Ove Arup, Australia. October 12th 2002

Myriad is a sophisticated crowd and traffic analysis suite. It incorporates over 12 years of international research and development in the field of crowd dynamics providing more powerful analytical techniques and a wider range of validated results more quickly than alternatives. In fact, experienced consultants can use Myriad to analyse problems in minutes rather than hours or days or weeks. It is NOT one tool - but is the use of many tools that makes the Myriad methods more appropriate for crowd dynamics to both use and promote. We refer to this process as "crowd simulation".

What sets Crowd Dynamics apart from other software companies?

Our engineers are experts at analysing problems and using the RIGHT tools for the job. If those tools do not exist our experts can develop appropriate simulations as required.

Above - Spatial Analysis of a Supermarket - click here for further information.

Building a Myriad model to assess the "wear and tear" and under utilised space in a complex environment.

 

	Step 1. From a CAD file remove all the information (text etc.) that does NOT relate to the areas that the pedestrians will occupy. This is easily achieved by using the appropriate layers in autocad. Then you "export" as a bitmap.
	Step 2. Save as a screen image and import to Myriad - Myriad converts these files to a grey/black scale for processing. Once the bitmap is saved from from autocad you click on "import bitmap" and use the free space buttons to define the pedestrian areas.
	Step 3. Run a series of diffusion maps for each Origin-Destination pair. At this stage (a few minutes of user time) the system displays the areas of highest usage (wear and tear). the red area (left) shows the wear and tear for JUST the escalator bank at the bottom left. Given the Origins from all the other ingress areas. The process utilises a mathematical theorem which produces the overall probability of conflict maps.
	Step 4. Once the Diffusion Maps are stored for each Origin-Destination pair (called and O-D matrix) the superposition of ALL the O-D pairs produces a Level of Service map. Red areas have the highest utilisation and therefore at a given ingress/egress rate the highest Level of Service.
	Step 5. The areas of LOWEST space utilisation indicate those areas that could be reclaimed - it is this map (wasted space) that allows the user to determine the value engineering (how to develop cost effective spaces) can be justified.