Quasi-static evolution and congested crowd transport

Abstract

We consider the relationship between Hele-Shaw evolution with drift, the porous medium equation with drift, and a congested crowd motion model originally proposed by Maury et al (2010 Math. Models Methods Appl. Sci. 20 1787–821). We first use viscosity solutions to show that the porous medium equation solutions converge to the Hele-Shaw solution as m → ∞ provided the drift potential is strictly subharmonic. Next, using the gradient-flow structure of both the porous medium equation and the crowd motion model, we prove that the porous medium equation solutions also converge to the congested crowd motion as m → ∞. Combining these results lets us deduce that in the case where the initial data to the crowd motion model is given by a patch, or characteristic function, the solution evolves as a patch that is the unique solution to the Hele-Shaw problem. While proving our main results we also obtain a comparison principle for solutions with the minimizing movement scheme based on the Wasserstein metric, of independent interest.