Safety & Security of Urban Crowded Environments

Prof. Dr. Gerta Köster
Computer Science and Mathematics, Department 07

For added security, Prof. Dr. Gerta Köster simulates visitor behavior based on real-time data in the S²UCRE project.

Looking three minutes into the future - that's what security managers dream of at major events. In an emergency, they have to act within seconds: redirect the flow of people or close an entrance to prevent life-threatening human congestion.

Simulations make it possible for organizers, security and rescue services to better assess in advance how their measures will affect the flow of visitors. They illustrate how visitors behave and allow them to make scientifically sound decisions in the event of an emergency.

In the new German-French research project S²UCRE , Prof. Dr. Gerta Köster and her team continue their work on simulations of visitor behavior. Together with technical partners, psychologists and users, they collect real-time data on visitor behavior, read it in and create future scenarios for the security forces. One test scenario is the Hamburg Harbor Festival.

The PhD students at Munich University of Applied Sciences are tackling two main challenges: The acceleration of the algorithms for real-time capability and the question to what extent uncertainties and errors in the input data falsify the forecasts.

The project’s research results are accessible to all via the open-source simulator VADERE.

Running duration:
01.08.2017 - 31.07.2020, extended until 31.10.2020

Funded by:
Federal Ministry of Education and Research

Project Executing organisation:
VDI - Technology Centre GmbH, Düsseldorf

Project Partners:

• Fraunhofer IOSB, Karlsruhe
• accu:rate GmbH, Munich, Germany
• SECURITON GmbH, Achern, Germany
• Team HF PartG, Ludwigsburg
• Goethe University Frankfurt am Main