Smart Street Design for Managing Crowds in Hajj

Abstract

Hajj is an annual pilgrimage to Makkah in Saudi Arabia where over two and a half million pilgrims attend. It is one of the most intense crowded events in the world. Unfortunately, Hajj has witnessed several stampedes, fires and other disasters, which have led to the death of thousands of people. In recent years, the hajj management has made several improvements in the infrastructure, which has helped ease congestion in crowded rituals. However, despite the great development and huge contributions in improving the infrastructure of the facilities, the problem of crowd control and congestion still remains a real challenge to the management. Although crowd management during hajj is exemplary, it still remains largely manual. This research proposes an innovative solution by designing digital smart streets based on cheap LED-light screens, and control algorithm in addition to distributed fog nodes, wireless network sensors, and servers for the main computing and management. The proposed system will facilitate the process of controlling crowds, and the way it will function with the help of special signals and colors. These signs and instructions can be quickly and easily followed and adopted by people within the crowd. In this way, crowd management would be able to provide a prompt response to the requests and alerts from the central command. We use many techniques to detect the issues of crowds and locate places of interest based on the fog nodes and digital street processing. A prototype of the proposed system has been simulated to demonstrate its feasibility and ease of application to determine the benefits and features that it is capable to achieve, if implemented in crowded areas during the course of the Hajj.