Toward Better Management of Potentially Hostile Crowds
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Authors
Aros, Susan
Baylouny, Anne Marie
Gibbons, Deborah E.
McDonald, Mary
Subjects
Advisors
Date of Issue
2021
Date
Publisher
IEEE
Language
Abstract
The U.S. Capitol protest and siege in January 2021 provides a vivid demonstration of the challenges posed by managing potentially hostile crowds. Individuals in these crowds are organized into identity groups. Crowd participants’ emotions, beliefs, objectives and group affiliations are dynamic. Security forces managing such crowds are tasked with the weighty decisions of tactical rules-of-engagement and choice of weapons. We have developed an agent-based simulation modeling the detailed psychological and behavioral dynamics of individuals and groups in a potentially hostile crowd. This crowd is modeled as actively engaging with security forces that protect a compound. The user can specify crowd attributes, choose diverse non-lethal weapons and rules-of-engagement, watch the event play out, and see the impacts on key outcomes of crowd attitudes and actions. We present our prototype simulation and initial experimental results. We then discuss our future plans for this research.
Type
Conference Paper
Description
Proceedings of the 2021 Winter Simulation Conference; S. Kim, B. Feng, K. Smith, S. Masoud, Z. Zheng, C. Szabo and M. Loper, eds.
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Department
Organization
SEED Center for Data Farming (Simulation Experiments & Efficient Designs)
Center for Modeling Human Behavior (CMHB)
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NPS Report Number
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Format
12 p.
Citation
Distribution Statement
Rights
This publication is a work of the U.S. Government as defined in Title 17, United States Code, Section 101. Copyright protection is not available for this work in the United States.