Abstract
Hajj is a mass gathering event that takes place annually in Makkah, Saudi Arabia. Typically, around three million people participate in the event and perform rituals that involve their movements within strict space and time restrictions. Despite efforts by the Hajj organisers, such massive crowd gathering and movement cause overcrowding related problems at the Hajj sites. Several previous simulation studies on Hajj focused on the rituals individually. Tawaf, followed by Sayee, are two important rituals that are performed by all the pilgrims at the same venue on the same day. These events have a strong potential for crowd buildup and related problems. As opposed the previous works in the literature, in this paper we study these two events jointly, rather than separately. We use ExtendSim, a Discrete Event Simulation tool, to integrate the Tawaf and Sayee rituals into one model. The validated model was applied to a wide range of scenarios where different percentages of pilgrims were allocated to the various Tawaf and Sayee areas. The effect of such allocations on the time to complete Tawaf and Sayee indicate strategies for managing these two key Hajj rituals.
Highlights
Mass Gathering (MG) events involve participation of more than 1,000 people in one site at the same time [1] for a specific purpose and for a finite duration [2]
This paper focuses on the two rituals performed in the Grand Mosque (GM) during Hajj, on the 3rd day of Hajj: Tawaf Al-ifadah; and Sayee between the two hills of Al-Safa and Al-Marwah, close to the Tawaf area [9]
SIMULATION RESULTS The model was run 30 times and the results were compared against statistics based on the real data (TABLES 3, 4 and 5)
Summary
Mass Gathering (MG) events involve participation of more than 1,000 people in one site at the same time [1] for a specific purpose and for a finite duration [2]. Because of the large number of attendees, MGs pose many challenges such as crowd management, security and emergency readiness [2]. If these challenges are not well managed, MGs can result in adverse outcomes, including spread of diseases, The associate editor coordinating the review of this manuscript and approving it for publication was Giambattista Gruosso. With an already large and ordinarily increasing numbers of pilgrims each year, Hajj authorities will continue to face bigger challenges, primarily relating to the safety and security of pilgrims [11]. Given the uniqueness of the event, the complexity of the planning associated with Hajj, its impacts [12], and the anticipation that Hajj attendance will increase post-COVID19 pandemic, a rigorous and
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