This book continues the biannual series of conference proceedings, which has become a classical reference resource in traffic and granular research alike. It addresses new developments at the interface between physics, engineering and computational science. Complex systems, where many simple agents, be they vehicles or particles, give rise to surprising and fascinating phenomena.

The contributions collected in these proceedings cover several research fields, all of which deal with transport. Topics include highway, pedestrian and internet traffic, granular matter, biological transport, transport networks, data acquisition, data analysis and technological applications. Different perspectives, i.e. modeling, simulations, experiments and phenomenological observations, are considered.

This book covers several research fields, all of which deal with transport. Three main topics are treated: road traffic, granular matter, and biological transport. Different points of view, i.e. modelling, simulations, experiments, and phenomenological observations, are considered. Sub-topics include: highway or urban vehicular traffic (dynamics of traffic, macro/micro modelling, measurements, data analysis, security issues, psychological issues),  pedestrian traffic, animal traffic (e.g. social insects), collective motion in biological systems (molecular motors...), granular flow (dense flows, intermittent flows, solid/liquid transition, jamming, force networks, fluid and solid friction), networks (biological networks, urban traffic, the internet, vulnerability of networks, optimal transport networks) and cellular automata applied to the various aforementioned fields.

These proceedings are the fifth in the series Traffic and Granular Flow, and we hope they will be as useful a reference as their predecessors. Both the realistic modelling of granular media and traffic flow present important challenges at the borderline between physics and engineering, and enormous progress has been made since 1995, when this series started. Still the research on these topics is thriving, so that this book again contains many new results. Some highlights addressed at this conference were the influence of long range electric and magnetic forces and ambient fluids on granular media, new precise traffic measurements, and experiments on the complex decision making of drivers. No doubt the “hot topics” addressed in granular matter research have diverged from those in traffic since the days when the obvious analogies between traffic jams on highways and dissipative clustering in granular flow intrigued both c- munities alike. However, now just this diversity became a stimulating feature of the conference. Many of us feel that our joint interest in complex systems, where many simple agents, be it vehicles or particles, give rise to surprising and fascin- ing phenomena, is ample justification for bringing these communities together: Traffic and Granular Flow has fostered cooperation and friendship across the scientific disciplines.

How do people behave in different traffic situations? Are there general laws for mathematical modelling of decision dynamics? The answers, given at the first international workshop on "Human Behaviour in Traffic Networks", are presented in this volume. In 13 articles, well-known experts report about their current work on experiments and modelling in this area. The topics range from psychological behaviour in traffic situations, traffic simulations of various aspects and market analysis to experiments with human participants used in experimental economics. The articles filled with many illustrations are aimed at interested students as well as experts in this field.

The workshop on "computational physics of transport and interfacial dynam ics" was held in Dresden, Germany from February 25 to March 8,2002. The Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems has sponsored the workshop and the preliminary lecture-based seminar. The workshop has closely pursued the recent progress of research in com putational physics and materials science, particularly in modelling both traf fic fiow phenomena and complex multi-scale solidification. These branches of science have become topics of considerable diversity linking disciplines as different as physics, mathematical and computational modelling, nonlinear dynamics, materials sciences, statistical mechanics and foundry technique. The international workshop brought together experts from different fields in order to enhance the exchange of knowledge, to assess common interests and to provide closer cooperation between different communities of researchers. The workshop intended to create a comprehensive and coherent image of the current research status and to formulate various possible perspectives for joint future activities. Special emphases laid on exchanging experiences concerning numerical tools and on the bridging of the scales as necessary in a variety of scientific and engineering applications. An interesting possibility along this line was the coupling of different computational approaches leading to hybrid simulations. In this sense, we explicitly addressed researchers working with different numerical schemes as diverse as cellular automata, coupled maps, fi nite difference and finite element algorithms for partial differential equations (e. g. phase-field computations).

Anyone who reflects on the future of society cannot do so without at the same time thinking about the future of our transportation systems. The dilemma is obvious. On the one hand, mobility must be maintained as it is crucial to economic development and because people are eager for individual mobility. On the other hand, traffic imposes heavy burdens on people and on the environment, on cities and communities and on our national economies. Finding a solution to that dilemma seems to be difficult, in fact we have not even developed a rough idea of how it could look like. This is why the North Rhine-Westphalia Science and Research Ministry came up with the plan to work out a well-founded scientific basis on which to solve the problems inherent in our transport system. A research network has been established and sponsored with government funds for a period of three years with a view to realising that objective. The "Traffic Simulation and Environmental Impact" research network is composed of researchers who have an excellent reputation as North Rhine-Westphalia traffic experts. Cutting across various disciplines of knowledge, the network aims to integrate transportation and natural sciences, particularly physics and mathematics, in a move to profit by the synergy between technical know-how and innovative methodology. The present volume is intended as a progress report and a prologue to the forthcoming international colloquium which represents the highlight and at the same time the end of the three-year project funding period.

During the last decade physicists, engineers and computer scientists have joined in an enormously fruitful dialogue about traffic and granular flow. Cars and sand grains have in common, that they interact irreversibly, which is the reason for similar jamming phenomena. The main difference is that car drivers choose their destination and route individually, while grains follow external driving forces. This book gives an overview about the progress in modelling, computer simulation, experiments and field observations, which was reached within the last two years. The contributions are based on the International Workshop Traffic and Granular Flow '01, which took place in Nagoya, 15 - 17 October 2001. Topics include a critical classification of models for highway traffic, new technological applications, friction and arching phenomena in pedestrian traffic, scale free networks and internet traffic, instabilities and fluctuations in avalanches and granular pipe flow.

Due to an increasing number of reported catastrophes all over the world, the safety especially of pedestrians today, is a dramatically growing field of interest, both for practitioners as well as scientists from various disciplines. The questions arising mainly address the dynamics of evacuating people and possible optimisations of the process by changing the architecture and /or the procedure. This concerns not only the case of ships, stadiums or buildings, all with restricted geometries, but also the evacuation of complete geographical regions due to natural disasters. Furthermore, also ‘simple’ crowd motion in ‘relaxed’ situations poses new questions with respect to higher comfort and efficiency since the number of involved persons at large events is as high as never before. In addition, as a new research topic in this field, collective animal behaviour is attracting increasing attention. All this was in the scope of the conference held in Vienna, September 28–30, 2005, the third one in a series after Duisburg (2001) and Greenwich (2003).

The conference series Tra?c and Granular Flow has been established in 1995 and has since then been held biannually. At that time, the investigation of granular materials and tra?c was still somewhat exotic and was just starting to become popular among physicists. Originally the idea behind this conference series was to facilitate the c- vergence of the two ?elds, inspired by the similarities of certain phenomena and the use of similar theoretical methods. However, in recent years it has become clear that probably the di?erences between the two systems are much more interesting than the similarities. Nevertheless, the importance of various interrelations among these ?elds is still growing. The workshop continues to o?er an opportunity to stimulate this interdisciplinary research. Over the years the spectrum of topics has become much broader and has included also problems related to topics ranging from social dynamics to - ology. The conference manages to bring together people with rather di?erent background, ranging from engineering to physics, mathematics and computer science. Also the full range of scienti?c tools is represented with presentations of empirical, experimental, theoretical and mathematical work. TheworkshoponTra?candGranularFlow’05wasthesixthinthisseries. Previous conferences were held in Julic ̈ h (1995), Duisburg (1997), Stuttgart (1999), Nagoya (2001), and Delft (2003). For its 10th anniversary, Berlin was chosen as location, the largest city and capital of Germany. Berlin is also one ofthecentersfortransportrelatedresearchandhostsmanyresearchinstitutes that have a long history in the ?elds covered by the workshop.

The international conference on "Pedestrian and Evacuation Dynamics", held on February 27-29, 2008 at Wuppertal University in Germany, was the fourth in this series after successful meetings in Duisburg (2001), Greenwich (2003) and Vienna (2005). The conference was aimed at improving the scientific exchange between scientists, experts and practitioners of various fields of pedestrian and evacuation dynamics and featured: the analysis of evacuation processes and pedestrian motion, modeling of pedestrian dynamics in various situations, experiments on pedestrian dynamics, human behavior research, regulatory action. All these topics are included in this book to give a broad and state-of-the-art overview of pedestrian and evacuation dynamics.