Who goes there? Using an agent-based simulation for tracking population movement

摘要

We present a method to apply simulations to the tracking of a live event such as an evacuation. We assume only a limited amount of information is available as the event is ongoing, through population-counting sensors such as surveillance cameras. In this context, agent-based models provide a useful ability to simulate individual behaviors and relationships among members of a population; however, agent-based models also introduce a significant data-association challenge when used with population-counting sensors that do not specifically identify agents. The main contribution of this paper is to develop an efficient method for managing the combinatorial complexity of data association. The key to our approach is to map from the state-space to an alternative correspondence-vector domain, where the measurement update can be implemented efficiently. We present a simulation study involving an evacuation over a road network and show that our method allows close tracking of the population over time.