JSC Division “Civil Safety and Traffic” Becomes a Separate Institute Division (IAS-7)

In March this year, the new Civil Safety Research institute division (IAS-7) was founded out of the JSC division Civil Safety and Traffic. The institute division’s main focus of research is on crowd and fire dynamics in the context of civil engineering and safety science. The four IAS-7 divisions, Pedestrian Dynamics – Empiricism, Pedestrian Dynamics – Theory, Fire Dynamics, and Engineering Applications, aim to create new numerical models and validation experiments. The spectrum of methods developed includes agent-based models and computational fluid dynamics. The experiments range from small-scale fluid dynamics to pedestrian dynamics experiments involving hundreds of people.

The institute division can call on a broad spectrum of expertise, ranging from mathematicians and physicists to engineers and architects. Current third-party projects are concerned with railway infrastructure during regular operation as well as during large-scale evacuation scenarios. In addition to the close partnerships with national and international universities, such projects broaden the institute's network to include collaboration with fire brigades and crisis teams. Furthermore, there is a close partnership with the University of Wuppertal, where lectures are held and theses are supervised by members of the subinstitute.

The new institute division’s expertise in combining the fields of crowd and fire dynamics puts it in a globally unique position. IAS-7 enhances the scientific scope of the Institute for Advanced Simulation (IAS) to address emerging challenges in growing cities and the increasing demands placed on transport infrastructure. Further information can be found at http://fz-juelich.de/ias/ias-7.

Contact: Prof. Armin Seyfried, a.seyfried@fz-juelich.de

from JSC News No. 262, 29 November 2018