Another Way for the Man to Keep You Down
By This sounds really cool, in a mildly creepy kind of way:
[Rick] McKenzie has devised Crowd Federate, a model that will add a crowd component to a variety of defense simulations. “The intent is to provide a real-time, realistic, psychologically based crowd model to provide interactions with control forces.”
Based on extensive psychological research, Crowd Federate works at several levels. At the smallest, the model tracks individual people, although only for navigation within the city at this point. The psychological aspects kick in at the group level, with groups typically composed of 10 people.
“There are different types of groups,” McKenzie said. “There is the protester group which protests for a cause. They’re the ones holding the banners. The agitator group is there to cause trouble. The bystanders are just there and don’t want to get involved. Then there is the curious group that will move toward anything interesting and stick their noses in. If something violent should erupt, they will probably run away.”
To some extent, the behavior of the military forces will determine the response of these groups. The very presence of soldiers may ratchet up tensions, as will shooting into the crowd. But numerous other factors influence crowd behavior, and many can be adjusted by simulation operators. One key sets the overall crowd emotion level, expressed through nine levels of aggression.
Terrain and cultural factors are also included, although the operationalization of the latter seems kind of clumsy:
The Crowd Federate has two cultural variables. On one end is a user-determined rating for inherently cultural aggression. On the other end is a rating for the cultural awareness of local customs among the military forces. The most volatile combination is an aggressive culture and a culturally insensitive army.
There are also environmental factors. Terrain affects the aggressiveness of crowds and their tendency to mass.
The simulation is being vetted for use by Joint Forces Command. Previous simulations have either severely simplified civilian behavior or just dealt with the behavior of groups. If it works for the Pentagon, expect the simulation to be used by your local police.