ESCAPE aims to increase the security at major events that take place at the same time. Macroscopic and microscopic simulation models are to be linked and compared with real data in order to enable comprehensive preparation for security authorities in such particularly challenging situations. The current ESCAPE project is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) with a total of 400,000 Euros in the program Research for Civil Security: "Anwender – Innovativ: Forschung für die zivile Sicherheit II“".
Background
In numerous major German cities, folk festivals, concerts and public viewing events with thousands of visitors take place simultaneously and in close proximity to each other. Safety and evacuation concepts of the organizers currently only take into account the respective event. The flows of visitors of parallel events, which can collide with the own flows of visitors in case of emergency, are not considered so far. The possibility to simulate complex scenarios user-friendly and to integrate them into the conceptual planning of events is missing so far.
Project goal
The overall goal of ESCAPE is to provide security authorities with a manageable simulation tool which enables them to analyze the safety-relevant interactions of concurrent major events. Such projects are usually so large, however, that a purely microscopic analysis requires a great deal of computation. Therefore, the consortium aims to divide the simulation area. Critical areas such as bottlenecks are simulated with the microscopic model, while the remaining areas are simulated with the macroscopic model. This allows security authorities to efficiently assess large events taking place in parallel.
Implementation
In order to achieve this goal, the simulation software is to be extended. Defined areas can be simulated with the macroscopic or microscopic model and a switch between the models is possible. Additionally, an automatic detection of critical areas shall be integrated. Furthermore, the visualization of the simulation results will be extended in such a way that the critical areas can be viewed in detail. With the help of the extended software, two parallel events will be simulated and the results will be compared with real data.
ESCAPE closes a significant gap between current visitor simulations and the increasing demands on the conceptual planning of concurrent events. Safety planners, event organizers as well as police, fire departments or infrastructure operators thus receive the same information and can carry out the planning of major events in a targeted, fast and efficient manner.
