The article describes a multi-agent approach to crowd modeling and simulation. After a brief introduction of the Situated Cellular Agents model, the guidelines to the crowd modeling approach is introduced as a way to support the communication among the different actors that are part of the simulation project team. The approach is then applied to describe a complex scenario providing a blend of competitive and cooperative behavior for pedestrian agents: an underground station. A module supporting the effective 3D visualization of simulated crowd dynamics is finally introduced, as an instrument for the communication of simulation results to decision makers and nonexperts in crowd phenomena.

The development of pedestrian simulation systems requires the acquisition of empirical evidences about human behaviour for sake of model validation. In this framework, the paper presents the results of an on field observation of pedestrian behaviour in an urban crowded walkway. The research was aimed at testing the potentially combined effect of ageing and grouping on speed and proxemic behaviour. In particular, we focused on dyads, as the most frequent type of groups in the observed scenario. Results showed that in situation of irregular flows elderly pedestrians walked the 40% slower than adults, due to locomotion skill decline. Dyads walked the 30% slower than singles, due to the need to maintain spatial cohesion to communicate (proxemics). Results contributed to refine the parametric validation of the agent-based simulation system ELIAS38.