Abstract
Dense crowds in public spaces have often caused serious security issues at large events. In this paper, we study the 2010 Love Parade disaster, for which a large amount of data (e.g. research papers, professional reports and video footage) exist. We reproduce the Love Parade disaster in a three-dimensional computer simulation calibrated with data from the actual event and using the social force model for pedestrian behaviour. Moreover, we simulate several crowd management strategies and investigate their ability to prevent the disaster. We evaluate these strategies in virtual reality (VR) by measuring the response and arousal of participants while experiencing the simulated event from a festival attendee’s perspective. Overall, we find that opening an additional exit and removing the police cordons could have significantly reduced the number of casualties. We also find that this strategy affects the physiological responses of the participants in VR.
Highlights
Crowd disasters during large-scale events are a primary concern for event security because of the related casualties and chaos
Results of the virtual reality (VR) experiment showed that, for the stress state questionnaire (SSSQ), there were no significant differences between the O and exit and no police cordons (E–P) scenarios in terms of distress (O = 0.66 ± 0.71, effective intervention group (E−P) = 0.54 ± 1.31), t(56) = 0.444, s.e. = 0.277, p = 0.659; engagement (O = −0.30 ± 0.82, E−P = −0.08 ± 0.97), t(56) = −0.93, s.e. = 0.236, p = 0.357; or worry (O = −0.26 ± 0.76, E−P = −0.15 ± 0.96), t(56) = −0.489, s.e. = 0.227, p = 0.627
For electrodermal activity (EDA), we found a significant difference between the O and E−P scenarios in terms of non-specific skin conductance responses (O = 3.57 ± 13.91, E−P = 11.24 ± 12.09), t(56) = −2.241, s.e. = 3.422, p = 0.029, but not in terms of the sum of the amplitude of these peaks (AmpSum) (O = 2.93 ± 10.57, E−P = 4.24 ± 5.76), t(56) = −0.586, s.e. = 2.237, p = 0.560
Summary
Crowd disasters during large-scale events are a primary concern for event security because of the related casualties and chaos. Virtual reality (VR) experiments allow researchers to investigate individuals’ responses to simulated crowds and the physical and social conditions surrounding the event (e.g. exiting barriers or fences) and to precisely measure participants’ physiological reactions and spatial behaviour. Both simulation and VR approaches may facilitate the development of disaster prevention methods. We test several possible crowd management strategies, including the removal of physical obstacles and the separation of inflow and outflow. These strategies are evaluated with respect to crowd density, throughput, congestion and the number of simulated casualties. Individual participants are immersed in one of two crowd scenarios as we measure their physiological arousal and self-reported level of stress
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