Viacheslav Abrosimov – Senior Researcher, head of department, Step Logic Company.
Address: 3, build. 3, Polkovaya str., Moscow, 127018, Russian Federation.
E-mail: v_abrosimov@step.ru

Valentin Lebidko – Senior Analyst, Step Logic Company.
Address: 3, build. 3, Polkovaya str., Moscow, 127018, Russian Federation.
E-mail: v_lebidko@step.ru 

One of the central tasks in modeling, which arise when organizing a mass-scale public event, is simulation of the visitors crowds’ flow through various delimiters: metal detectors, turnstiles, ticket boxes, police officers, streaming the crowd. Along with modeling the restrictions, it is important to simulate certain groups of events, which may both distort in the plan and order of the event, and change the flow of the crowd: cancelled event, interrupted event, terrorists’ attacks etc.

Simulation modeling is one of the major methods used to study mass-scale public events, the paper’s example being XII Sochi Winter Olympic Games. The elements of the system “visitors – service personnel – sports buildings” and their interaction has been described though the following algorithm. The object of modeling is the groups of people attending the event (visitors) and its service personnel. The planning of the visitors’ paths was described as the spatial motions of “intellectual agents” falling into several key groups. Agents are persons attending the event (visitors). Each agent from a certain group had their own behavior parameters, acted independent from other agents with the aim of visiting the event and dependent of the external factors and the crowd effect. An agent’s parameters were determined only by the group their belong to, and this determined an agent’s strategy.

The designed simulation model allowed describing the stream of people intending to visit a mass sports event of the Games, those both with and without the documents providing admittance to the event. The model also describes such phenomena as the queues and (as an extreme case) crowd as part of the mass event management, depending on the public transport and serving devices characteristics, as the following: the number of metal detectors and turnstiles, admittance documents lending efficiency, as well as the volunteers’ work effectiveness as the part of the regular service activities for the Games’ visitors.

The simulation results in identifying crisis events causing the increase in time periods for giving out admittance documents and, consequently, queues starting to form; as well as unpredictable occurances collecting huge crowds at the exits and distorting the sports event.

The simulation results are presented in the form of process diagrams in UML notation (Unified Modeling Language), implemented in the software product AnyLogic 6.