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From text to 3D crowd simulation scenario

  • By Roland Geraerts
  • - 2026-09-16

On September 16, we have presented PREP at the Innovation Market: Immersive Solutions for Public Safety, organized by the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO), the Dutch National Police, the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, and CIIIC.

PREP stands for Police Rapid Environment and Preparation and was developed as part of the Innovation Impact Challenge for the Dutch National Police.

In our previous post, we showed how AI, digital twins, and crowd simulation come together to make operational planning faster and more accessible. Our poster now shows what this looks like in practice.

From words to an operational scenario

A police officer describes a situation in natural language. PREP then:

  • Automatically builds a 3D environment using Dutch geospatial data.
  • Uses AI to ask for any missing information.
  • Translates the description into a dynamic crowd scenario.
  • Visualizes crowd behavior and density in the environment.
  • Enables users to compare different interventions and what-if scenarios immediately.

This shifts preparation from spending hours studying a map to interactively exploring possible situations.

The poster demonstrates this at three levels of detail:

  • 2D: The familiar crowd-density view on a map.
  • 3D: Crowd movement, including congestion, bottlenecks, and crowd crush.
  • 3D photogrammetry: The actual location, making the scenario recognizable in its real-world spatial context.

The difference is substantial:

  • From 3–4 hours to less than 1 hour per scenario.
  • Run an additional what-if variant in minutes.
  • Increase from 15 to 30+ developed scenarios per unit per year.

An important principle is that local data and the AI model remain on-premises.

PREP is not intended to replace operational experts. Its purpose is to help translate their knowledge into scenarios more quickly, make alternatives visible, and uncover potential blind spots in the preparation process.

We look forward to presenting our work in Utrecht and talking with professionals from the police, public safety, local government, public transport, and other fields where decisions must be made under pressure. The innovation market brings together 20 innovative companies and offers an opportunity to explore solutions and discuss potential collaborations.

Curious about how a natural-language description can become a dynamic 3D crowd scenario? Come and meet us!

This project is funded through the Innovation Impact Challenge: IX for the Dutch National Police, commissioned by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science. The project is part of the Creative Industries Immersive Impact Coalition (CIIIC) programme.

#crowd #simulation #pedestrianDynamics #AI #digitalTwin

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