Abstract
Pedestrian microscopic simulation models can aid crowd management only if they can reproduce the crowd behavior correctly. To calibrate and validate the model, it is important to understand crowd movement during various activities involved in mass gathering events. A common practice in such gathering is to hold attendees in waiting area in near corridors separated by crowd barriers before the event and allow entering the event only after a designated time. The crowd is released in small batches to avoid overcrowding inside. Long waiting hours, anger, excitement, competitive feeling etc. can make crowd aggressive during such entries. Crowd flow characteristics due to such behavior is difficult to recreate in pedestrian experimental studies in laboratory setting. This paper studied interrupted flow of such crowd through a narrow corridors made of strong railing channel inside a temple. Interrupted flow lead to formation of one dimensional stop and go waves. These stop and go waves were studied from the trajectory data. The average speed of waves propagating over longer distance were also estimated. The quantitative output from this study can be used to calibrate and validate simulation models of such activity during mass gathering events.
Highlights
Mass gatherings can be music concerts, religious observance, sport events, rallies etc
With advances in science and technology, it is possible to use microscopic pedestrian simulation models [1,2,3,4,5,6] to evaluate various crowd management plans prior to the event and they can be used to run real time simulation to predict any crowd risk during the event. These tools can provide aid to crowd management only if they can re-enact every aspect of crowd behavior accurately
The results from this study can be used to calibrate and validate models to simulate the entry of crowd into such venues, which is a component of overall crowd management plan
Summary
Mass gatherings can be music concerts, religious observance, sport events, rallies etc. With advances in science and technology, it is possible to use microscopic pedestrian simulation models [1,2,3,4,5,6] to evaluate various crowd management plans prior to the event and they can be used to run real time simulation to predict any crowd risk during the event. These tools can provide aid to crowd management only if they can re-enact every aspect of crowd behavior accurately. The results from this study can be used to calibrate and validate models to simulate the entry of crowd into such venues, which is a component of overall crowd management plan
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