FROM CROWD DYNAMICS TO CROWD SAFETY: A VIDEO-BASED ANALYSIS

Dirk Helbing · Habib Z. Al-Abideen · Salim Al-Bosta

356 citations0/0 files storedAdvances in Complex Systems

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Evacuation and Crowd Dynamics Urban Design and Spatial Analysis Structural Engineering and Vibration Analysis

Abstract

The study of crowd dynamics is interesting because of the various self-organization phenomena resulting from the interactions of many pedestrians, which may improve or obstruct their flow. Besides formation of lanes of uniform walking direction and oscillations at bottlenecks at moderate densities, it was recently discovered that stop-and-go waves [D. Helbing et al., Phys. Rev. Lett.97 (2006) 168001] and a phenomenon called "crowd turbulence" can occur at high pedestrian densities [D. Helbing et al., Phys. Rev. E75 (2007) 046109]. Although the behavior of pedestrian crowds under extreme conditions is decisive for the safety of crowds during the access to or egress from mass events as well as for situations of emergency evacuation, there is still a lack of empirical studies of extreme crowding. Therefore, this paper discusses how one may study high-density conditions based on suitable video data. This is illustrated at the example of pilgrim flows entering the previous Jamarat Bridge in Mina, 5 kilometers from the Holy Mosque in Makkah, Saudi-Arabia. Our results reveal previously unexpected pattern formation phenomena and show that the average individual speed does not go to zero even at local densities of 10 persons per square meter. Since the maximum density and flow are different from measurements in other countries, this has implications for the capacity assessment and dimensioning of facilities for mass events. When conditions become congested, the flow drops significantly, which can cause stop-and-go waves and a further increase of the density until critical crowd conditions are reached. Then, "crowd turbulence" sets in, which may trigger crowd disasters. For this reason, it is important to operate pedestrian facilities sufficiently below their maximum capacity and to take measures to improve crowd safety, some of which are discussed in the end.

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References

1995Social force model for pedestrian dynamics 2000Simulating dynamical features of escape panic 2001Simulation of pedestrian dynamics using a two-dimensional cellular automaton 2005Self-Organized Pedestrian Crowd Dynamics: Experiments, Simulations, and Design Solutions 2007Dynamics of crowd disasters: An empirical study 2002Pedestrian and evacuation dynamics 2002Simulation of pedestrian crowds in normal and evacuation situations 2005The fundamental diagram of pedestrian movement revisited

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2009Methods for measuring pedestrian density, flow, speed and direction with minimal scatter 2009COMPARISON OF PEDESTRIAN FUNDAMENTAL DIAGRAM ACROSS CULTURES 2016A review of optimisation models for pedestrian evacuation and design problems 2020Data collection methods for studying pedestrian behaviour: A systematic review 2009Extraction and quantitative analysis of microscopic evacuation characteristics based on digital image processing

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