Crowd dynamics and conservation laws with non-local constraints

Abstract: In this paper we model pedestrian flows evacuating a narrow corridor through an exit by a one-dimensional hyperbolic conservation law with a non-local constraint. Existence and stability results for the Cauchy problem with Lipschitz constraint are achieved by a procedure that combines the wave-front tracking algorithm with the operator splitting method. The Riemann problem with piecewise constant constraint is discussed in details, stressing the possible lack of uniqueness, self-similarity and $\Lloc1$-continuity. One explicit example of application is provided.