Understanding pedestrian crowd panic: A review on model organisms approach

Abstract

Understanding how crowds behave during collective displacement is at the heart of both pedestrian traffic engineering and 'movement ecology'. Perhaps the most critical reason for studying collective human dynamics under emergency/panic conditions is the lack of complementary data to develop and validate an explanatory model. A little used alternative is to study non-human model organisms. In this paper, we review experiences in using non-human organisms to study crowd panic in the literature. We then highlight the potential contribution that research with biological entities could make to understand the complex pedestrian behaviour and the enhancement of pedestrian safety during emergency/pa..