This work presents a holonic organizational model of the environment for the simulation of pedestrians in buildings. A crowd of pedestrians is considered as a system composed of a large number of interacting entities. The global dynamics of this system cannot be reduced to the sum of the behaviors of its components, Multilevel simulation based on holonic multiagent models is one approach to analyze the dynamics of such systems. It allows their analysis by considering several levels of observation (microscopic, mesoscopic and macroscopic) and the available computing resources. In these systems, the environment is considered as an essential part. The behavior of the crowd is clearly distinguished from the behavior of the environment in which the pedestrians move. An organizational model is proposed to describe the structure and the dynamics of the indoor environment. This environment is structurally divided into areas, sub-areas, etc. Organizations and roles are mapped into a society of agents in charge of simulating the dynamics of the environment and their various missions in multiagent systems. This model also specifies the rules for changing the level of observation dynamically. Thus, each agent belonging to the model of the environment tries to use an approximation of behaviors of its sub-zones, and at the same time to minimize the resource consumption. The quality of the approximation between these two levels is evaluated with energy-based indicators. They help to determine if the agent approximates the behaviors of its sub-agents correctly. In addition to the organizational and holonic model proposed in this work, we present a concrete model of the simulation of passengers in an airport terminal. This concrete model is implemented on the platforms JaSIM and Janus.
A model of environment for the multilevel simulation : Application to the crowd simulation