Pedestrian dynamics is an interdisciplinary field of research. Psychologists, sociologists, traffic engineers, physicists, mathematicians and computer scientists all strive to understand the dynamics of a moving crowd. In principle, computer simulations offer means to further this understanding. Yet, unlike for many classic dynamical systems in physics, there is no universally accepted locomotion model for crowd dynamics. On the contrary, a multitude of approaches, with very different characteristics, compete. Often only the experts in one special model type are able to assess the consequences these characteristics have on a simulation study. Therefore, scientists from all disciplines who wish to use simulations to analyze pedestrian dynamics need a tool to compare competing approaches. Developers, too, would profit from an easy way to get insight into an alternative modeling ansatz. Vadere meets this interdisciplinary demand by offering an open-source simulation framework that is lightweight in its approach and in its user interface while offering pre-implemented versions of the most widely spread models.

We incorporate dynamic medium scale navigation in pedestrian motion models to avoid pedestrian groups and, as a new contribution, to obtain realistic queue formation in front of bottlenecks. A floor field stands for the utility of a pedestrian's location. Pedestrian agglomerations decrease utility unless the target can only be reached by queuing. Then the utility function is manipulated so that the utility is high in a corridor leading through the middle of the queue. In addition we present a reliable measure for density using a Gaussian function and apply filtering techniques from image processing to efficiently integrate densities over space.

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