Mobile Mapping of Sporting Event Spectators Using Bluetooth Sensors: Tour of Flanders 2011

Mathias Versichele,Frederik Van Bossche,Tijs Neutens,Nico Van De Weghe,Stephanie Goudeseune

doi:10.3390/s121014196

Abstract

Accurate spatiotemporal information on crowds is a necessity for a better management in general and for the mitigation of potential security risks. The large numbers of individuals involved and their mobility, however, make generation of this information non-trivial. This paper proposes a novel methodology to estimate and map crowd sizes using mobile Bluetooth sensors and examines to what extent this methodology represents a valuable alternative to existing traditional crowd density estimation methods. The proposed methodology is applied in a unique case study that uses Bluetooth technology for the mobile mapping of spectators of the Tour of Flanders 2011 road cycling race. The locations of nearly 16,000 cell phones of spectators along the race course were registered and detailed views of the spatiotemporal distribution of the crowd were generated. Comparison with visual head counts from camera footage delivered a detection ratio of 13.0 ± 2.3%, making it possible to estimate the crowd size. To our knowledge, this is the first study that uses mobile Bluetooth sensors to count and map a crowd over space and time.

Highlights

Throughout human history, people have had the tendency to sometimes gather in large numbers—either in an organized or spontaneous way
We propose a novel use-case for the Bluetooth tracking methodology: the mapping of spectators along the track of a road cycling race
In order to map spectators, we used a mobile platform equipped with two Bluetooth sensors that moved along the track registering Bluetooth devices belonging to spectators as it passed them by

Summary

Introduction

Throughout human history, people have had the tendency to sometimes gather in large numbers—either in an organized or spontaneous way. Regardless of the expected level of agitation, large crowds will always constitute a potential security risk. They will sometimes reach or even surpass the short-term carrying capacity of the local environment or certain bottlenecks inside it. Often caused by lacking planning and management, critical crowd densities can give rise to significant human casualties [2]. Besides these security issues, large events provide significant economical opportunities [3,4]. Certain mega events such as the Olympics have important social impacts for the hosts [5]

Methods

Results

Conclusion