  Although the traits emerged in a mass gathering are often non-deliberative,
the act of mass impulse may lead to irre- vocable crowd disasters. The two-fold
increase of carnage in crowd since the past two decades has spurred significant
advances in the field of computer vision, towards effective and proactive crowd
surveillance. Computer vision stud- ies related to crowd are observed to
resonate with the understanding of the emergent behavior in physics (complex
systems) and biology (animal swarm). These studies, which are inspired by
biology and physics, share surprisingly common insights, and interesting
contradictions. However, this aspect of discussion has not been fully explored.
Therefore, this survey provides the readers with a review of the
state-of-the-art methods in crowd behavior analysis from the physics and
biologically inspired perspectives. We provide insights and comprehensive
discussions for a broader understanding of the underlying prospect of blending
physics and biology studies in computer vision.
