Is the behaviour of a crowd in an emergency situation predictable? How does panic change human reactions? These and other questions are addressed in this text which looks at the modelling and simulation of pedestrian and crowd movement as well as the dynamical aspects of evacuation processes.

"Are there common phenomena and laws in the dynamic behavior of granular materials, traffic, and socio-economic systems?" The answers given at the international workshop "Traffic and Granular Flow '99" are presented in this volume. From a physical standpoint, all these systems can be treated as (self)-driven many-particle systems with strong fluctuations, showing multistability, phase transitions, non-linear waves, etc. The great interest in these systems is due to several unexpected new discoveries and their practical relevance for solving some fundamental problems of today's societies. This...