Abstract
Improvements in the design of pedestrian facilities have reduced the frequency of crowd accidents, and safety is now generally ensured in well-planned crowd events. However, congestion and inefficient use of infrastructures still remain an issue. To guarantee comfort and reduce close contacts between people, there are circumstances when crowd density may have to be reduced well below safety limits. Although research has given a lot of attention to extreme scenarios, methods to improve non-critical conditions have been little explored. In addition, crowd sensing technology is still mostly used for data collection and direct use on crowd management is rare. In this work, we present a system aimed at computing optimal egress time for groups of people leaving a complex facility. We show that, if egress starting time is accurately computed for each group based on actual crowd conditions, density can be greatly reduced without having a large effect on the total egress time of the whole crowd. To show the efficacy of such a system, a small-scale experiment is conducted where all components are tested in a simple scenario. As a result, an increase in total egress time by only 5% allowed to reduce maximum density by 35%.
Highlights
A growing number of countries worldwide are faced with the challenge of controlling crowd movements and ensuring no accident or dangerous situations occur while people are moving from place to place or are attending a large event or a royalsocietypublishing.org/journal/rsos R
Each scenario is different, the underlying principle will remain the same and the only difference consists of technological requirements and mathematical complexity needed to deal with each scenario
Since each event will attract a different number of people which is not always possible to predict, the managing company is interested in a system which would dynamically compute optimal delay based on real-time conditions
Summary
A growing number of countries worldwide are faced with the challenge of controlling crowd movements and ensuring no accident or dangerous situations occur while people are moving from place to place or are attending a large event or a royalsocietypublishing.org/journal/rsos R. Modern pedestrian tracking systems employ different technologies and are available in large number Those systems often operate in real-time, making the collection of crowd data a relatively easy task [11,12]. Experience gained from tragedies that occurred in the past, strict regulations imposed on operators of pedestrian facilities, and constantly improved simulation models used to design them, all contributed in reducing the number of crowd-related casualties In this context, safety in case of accidents (e.g. fire) is typically guaranteed in modern and well-designed facilities, allowing operators to focus on crowd management during normal operations and set attention on occupants’ well-being and minimize risks to which they are potentially exposed. Results relative to the system are later presented and conclusions are drawn at the end including an exhaustive discussion on limitations and potential future studies
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