Today, there is a meeting of the Scientific Advisory Board of RICAM with quite a few presentations of the different research groups of RICAM.
What I really liked: Marie-Therese Wolfram's (as far as I know, no family relations to Wolfram research) presentation on crowd movements that arose from her project Multiscale modelling and simulation of crowded transport in the life and social sciences.
We all know how nerve-consuming it may become to board an aeroplane (because the people with the heavy hand lugguage are always in front of you). Marie-Therese spoke on the advantage of intelligent crowds (using all information available and choose rational strategies) which may then reduce the danger of stampedes quite significantly. Guidance is necesary in such situations.
My personal experience when boarding a national flight within Japan: They flight attandants and the gate personnel were successful to board an aeroplane with 300 passengers in 8 minutes, because the passengers obeyed the rules.
