Visualization of discrete crowd dynamics in a 3D environment

The design of different kinds of environmental structures, at different detail levels, from the corridors or emergency exits of a building to the whole transportation system on urban or regional scale, may benefit from an envisioning of how it will perform, given specific assumptions on the usage conditions and the behaviours of the autonomous entities which will populate it. There is thus a growing interest in models and technologies supporting the simulation of this kind of domains. An innovative trend in supporting architects in their activities is represented by virtual environments in which alternative architectural designs can be visualized and compared by involved actors, in a collaborative decision scheme [1,2]. This kind of approach could be improved by the possibility to include in the virtual environments also an envisioning of pedestrian dynamics in the related architectural structures, given the fact that human movement behaviour has deep implications on the design of effective pedestrian facilities