Abstract
Each year, crowd disasters happen in different areas of the world. How and why do such disasters happen? Are the fatalities caused by relentless behavior of people or a psychological state of panic that makes the crowd ‘go mad’? Or are they a tragic consequence of a breakdown of coordination? These and other questions are addressed, based on a qualitative analysis of publicly available videos and materials, which document the planning and organization of the Love Parade in Duisburg, Germany, and the crowd disaster on July 24, 2010. Our analysis reveals a number of misunderstandings that have widely spread. We also provide a new perspective on concepts such as ‘intentional pushing’, ‘mass panic’, ‘stampede’, and ‘crowd crushes’. The focus of our analysis is on the contributing causal factors and their mutual interdependencies, not on legal issues or the judgment of personal or institutional responsibilities. Video recordings show that people stumbled and piled up due to a ‘domino effect’, resulting from a phenomenon called ‘crowd turbulence’ or ‘crowd quake’. Crowd quakes are a typical reason for crowd disasters, to be distinguished from crowd disasters resulting from ‘mass panic’ or ‘crowd crushes’. In Duisburg, crowd turbulence was the consequence of amplifying feedback and cascading effects, which are typical for systemic instabilities. Accordingly, things can go terribly wrong in spite of no bad intentions from anyone. Comparing the incident in Duisburg with others, we give recommendations to help prevent future crowd disasters. In particular, we introduce a new scale to assess the criticality of conditions in the crowd. This may allow preventative measures to be taken earlier on. Furthermore, we discuss the merits and limitations of citizen science for public investigation, considering that today, almost every event is recorded and reflected in the World Wide Web.
Highlights
Crowd disasters are known since at least the Roman Empire
In Duisburg, crowd turbulence was the consequence of amplifying feedback and cascading effects, which are typical for systemic instabilities
5 Discussion In the following, we try to gain an integrative view of causal factors of the crowd disaster, which strictly needs to be distinguished from a legal analysis or a determination of responsibilities
Summary
Crowd disasters are known since at least the Roman Empire. As a consequence, building codes for stadia were developed. The first people climbed the container of the crowd management on the South of the ramp at : This was the time, when the third police cordon is given up. Between : and : , the organizers found it difficult to control the inflow with the isolating devices (see Table ) This was probably not just a result of the excessive waiting times, which caused impatience, but possibly because some of their security people were needed elsewhere (e.g. to improve the outflow from the ramp or to guide VIPs). The police may have been surprised by the sudden need to take control, which was requested by the crowd manager when difficulties to access the festival area occurred at the upper end of the ramp. A triage procedure had to be applied. (This procedure is typical for war zones, major disasters, and terrorist attacks.) many people in critical health conditions did not get first aid
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