OPAC Intelligent Pedestrian Hydraulics

Where are the bottlenecks in a railway station when two trains arrive at the same time? Is the time sufficient for changing trains?

These are questions that can be tackled by pedestrian simulation. In this project we are developing a reusable agent-based simulation model where the simulated pedestrians flexibly avoid congested areas or re-plan their way through a facility based on a combination of high-level path planning and low level locomotion inspired by spatial cognition.

The OPAC model has been applied in a number of railway stations in Switzerland, mostly financed by SBB. November 2010 - May 2011, we are working on a detailed model of the Bern railway station.