SwRI Develops MACE Station(TM) Analysis Platform Which Simulates Actions of Hundreds - Even Thousands - of Individuals in Volatile Crowd Situations.

SAN ANTONIO -- A prototype software package developed by Southwest Research Institute allows law enforcement, military and event management personnel to analyze, model and research the behaviors and actions of hundreds of individuals in a potentially volatile crowd. The Modeling of Aggregates and Crowd Evaluation software, called MACE Station(TM), is a prototype platform for examining the actions of individuals in group, or aggregate, situations.

In MACE Station, individuals make independent decisions, follow and lead, show aggression and resistance, communicate, interact with the environment, and otherwise respond distinctly, creating the overall group dynamics. In contrast, existing tools model aggregates as a whole rather than modeling the unique behavior of each individual.

"Understanding the behavior of aggregate collections of individuals is challenging, complicated by the fact that modeling systems must take into account the varying behaviors and actions of hundreds or thousands of individuals," says Project Manager Thomas G. Glass, a senior research analyst in the SwRI(R) Training, Simulation and Performance Improvement Division. "Even so, current events in national and international arenas have emphasized the need for such a modeling system."

The prototype includes utilities for constructing aggregates and scenarios using extensive sets of attributes and behavior settings. It provides a variety of visualization tools and can be used as an analysis platform, as well as a briefing and training tool for event management or post-hoc incident evaluations.

MACE Station aggregates are built from hundreds or thousands of unique individuals. Behaviors are easily customized, system resource requirements are low and routine upgrades are easily developed for the aggregate individuals.

"We designed the infrastructure of this prototype to support rapid development of aggregate and crowd modeling scenarios," says Glass.

Users can build scenarios from any map and populate it with customized aggregates, controlling the behaviors and appearance of the individuals. During operation, individuals communicate among themselves; interact with the environment by causing destruction, looting and vandalizing; act on other individuals by heckling, protesting and fighting; and make decisions that affect the outcome of the scenario.

Users can pause, fast forward, single step or slow the speed of the scenario. A zoom window provides close-up views. Individuals can be monitored during operation or data can be logged for later study. Support for the introduction and analysis of lethal and non-lethal countermeasures is also addressed in the prototype. All stimuli are completely customizable.

File management utilities are available for saving and reusing scenarios, templates, aggregate individual data sets, presets, profiles, master files, objects and customized components. These features also allow the user to analyze timelines, evaluate the effects of changes in the use of resources and study variations in behavior.

"Further client development will significantly expand on these features," adds Glass. "The tool could even be adapted for animal migration analysis with custom behaviors programmed into each entity."

SwRI internal research funds supported this development. A patent is pending. For more information about the MACE Station, contact Dr. Thomas G. Glass at 210-522-5213 or [e-mail].

Editors: An image to support this article is available at http://www.swri.org/press/2006/mace.htm.

SwRI is an independent, nonprofit, applied research and development organization based in San Antonio, Texas, with more than 3,000 employees and an annual research volume of more than $435 million. For more information about Southwest Research Institute, please visit www.swri.org.