Effective Crowd Control Research Articles

Visualizing congestion at large-scale events with an interactive-view system incorporating proximity-based networks

Contact with infected individuals can lead to the spread of infectious diseases. During the COVID-19 pandemic, people were strongly urged to avoid the three Cs: closed spaces, crowded places, and close-contact settings. To hold large-scale events under such circumstances, reducing crowd congestion is key to preventing the further spread of infection. Therefore, identifying the pedestrian behaviors and walking patterns that pose a high risk of infection and utilizing them for effective crowd control is necessary. In this study, we propose an approach for visualizing walking paths while maintaining visibility from large-scale human flow data and representing both spatial and temporal features. The proposed method enables the visualization of the pedestrian proximity status as a network containing three components: a proximity network, proximity path, and pedestrian statistics that interact with each other. By operating the three components of this system interactively, we can observe the spatial and temporal features of situations with a high risk of infection during crowd congestion. An example of the operation of this system is presented by visualizing real-world human flow data measured at an event venue and identifying the proximity of the pedestrians.

Zarządzanie tłumem w akcji ratowniczej

Cel badań: Celem pracy jest edukacja w zakresie efektywnego zarządzania tłumem w czasie akcji ratowniczej. Przekaz kierowany jest zarówno do profesjonalnych służb (ratownictwo medyczne, wodne, górskie, drogowe, Straż Pożarna itp.), jak i ratowników ochotników.
 Metoda: Analiza literatury przedmiotu
 Wyniki i wnioski: Poznanie natury tłumu psychologicznego oraz mechanizmów, które nim rządzą daje osobom prowadzącym akcję ratowniczą narzędzia do skutecznego zarządzania. Wprowadzenie modułu zarządzania tłumem do szkoleń z zakresu szeroko pojętego ratownictwa jest pozytywnie odbierane przez szkolonych. Z ich relacji wynika, że wiedza ta dodaje im pewności siebie i rzeczywiście potrafi znacząco zwiększyć efektywność akcji ratowniczej.

Towards large scale high fidelity collaborative augmented reality

In recent years, there has been an increasing amount of Collaborative Augmented Reality (CAR) experiences, classifiable by the deployed scale and the fidelity of the experience. In this paper, we create HoloRoyale, the first large scale high fidelity (LSHF) CAR experience. We do this by first exploring the LSHF CAR design space, drawing on technical implementations and design aspects from AR and video games. We then create and implement a software architecture that improves the accuracy of synchronized poses between multiple users. Finally, we apply our target experience and technical implementation to the explored design space. A core design component of HoloRoyale is the use of visual repellers as crowd control elements to guide players away from undesired areas. To evaluate the effectiveness of the employed visual repellers in a LSHF CAR context we conducted a user study, deploying HoloRoyale in a 12.500 m2 area. The results from the user study suggest that visual repellers are effective crowd control elements that do not significantly impact the user’s overall immersion. Overall our main contribution is the exploration of a design space, discussing several means to address the challenges of LSHF CAR, the creation of a system capable of LSHF CAR interactions along with an experience that has been fitted to the design space, and an indepth study that verifies a key design aspect for LSHF CAR. As such, our work is the first to explore the domain of LSHF CAR and provides insight into designing experiences in other AR domains.

Incorporating Individual Behavior, Knowledge, and Roles in Simulating Evacuation

Emergency evacuation (egress) is an important issue in safety design of facilities and buildings. Studies of past emergency events have highlighted the need to consider occupants’ behaviors for better understanding of evacuation patterns. Occupants’ background and knowledge (such as the level of familiarity with the space and previous experience of emergencies) influence how individuals perceive the emergency situations that in turn can lead to different individual behaviors observed in evacuation. Furthermore, as reported by previous studies, people with special roles, such as staff members and emergency responders, often assume certain responsibilities and extend their roles to assist others and facilitate evacuation. Through simulations of stadium evacuation with 13,200 agents using SAFEgress, we show that the evacuation can be significantly more efficient when occupants possess the knowledge of the floor plan and evacuate from the nearest exit, leading to a shortening of evacuation time of 40%. Furthermore, strategically arranging stewards for crowd control can further enhance egress performance. The simulation study indicates the importance in considering the unique egress design of the venue (such as exit locations and signage), participating occupants’ knowledge of the space, and effective crowd control to achieve optimal egress outcome. By using SAFEgress to model different plausible evacuation behaviors, engineers, designers, and facility managers can evaluate and improve the design of safe egress systems and emergency preparedness planning.

Guide them through: An automatic crowd control framework using multi-objective genetic programming

We propose an automatic crowd control framework based on multi-objective optimisation of strategy space using genetic programming. In particular, based on the sensed local crowd densities at different segments, our framework is capable of generating control strategies that guide the individuals on when and where to slow down for optimal overall crowd flow in realtime, quantitatively measured by multiple objectives such as shorter travel time and less congestion along the path. The resulting Pareto-front allows selection of resilient and efficient crowd control strategies in different situations. We first chose a benchmark scenario as used in [1] to test the proposed method. Results show that our method is capable of finding control strategies that are not only quantitatively measured better, but also well aligned with domain experts’ recommendations on effective crowd control such as “slower is faster” and “asymmetric control”. We further applied the proposed framework in actual event planning with approximately 400 participants navigating through a multi-story building. In comparison with the baseline crowd models that do no employ control strategies or just use some hard-coded rules, the proposed framework achieves a shorter travel time and a significantly lower (20%) congestion along critical segments of the path.

Crowd Dynamics and Control in High-Volume Metro Rail Stations

Overcrowding in mass rapid transit stations is a chronic issue affecting daily commute in Metro Manila, Philippines. As a high-capacity public transportation, the Metro Rail Transit has been operating at a level above its intended capacity of 350,000 passengers daily. Despite numerous efforts in implementing an effective crowd control scheme, it still falls short in containing the formation of crowds and long lines, thus affecting the amount of time before they can proceed to the platforms. A crowd dynamics model of commuters in one of the high-volume terminal stations, the Taft Ave station, was developed to help discover emergent behavior in crowd formation and assess infrastructure preparedness. The agent-based model uses static floor fields derived from the MRT3 live feed, and implements a number of social force models to optimize the path-finding of the commuter agents. Internal face validation, historical validation and parameter variability-sensitivity analysis were employed to validate the crowd dynamics model and assess different operational scenarios. It was determined that during peak hours, when the expected crowd inflow may reach up to 7,500 commuters, at least 11 ticket booths and 6 turnstiles should be open to have low turnaround times of commuters. For non-peak hours, at least 10 ticket booths and 5 turnstiles are needed to handle a crowd inflow reaching up to 5,000 commuters. In the current set-up, the usual number of ticket booths open in the MRT Taft Station is 11, and there are usually 6 turnstiles open. It was observed that as the crowd inside the station increases to 200-250 commuters, there is a significant increase in the increase rate of the turnaround times of the commuters, which signifies the point at which the service provided starts to degrade and when officials should start to intervene.

Minimisation of the risk of trampling in a crowd

Over the past decade, there have been many crowd related tragedies. To help avoid such situations a strategy is developed here to improve the safety of pedestrians in densely populated situations. The results of simulations performed on two cases of accidents involving trampling, which occur when pedestrians are moving, illustrate the ability of this modelling strategy for minimising predicted crowding risks in such situations. This study demonstrates that effective crowd control may be achieved either by adjusting the size of the crowd or the complexity of the environment in which pedestrians walk, which effectively influences their speed.

Mobile medical relief and military assistance in Somalia.

Mobile medical clinics were established by an international medical relief organization to provide health care to victims of the war in Somalia. The study's purpose was to examine the prevalence of diseases seen and the effectiveness of mobile medical clinics, and to evaluate military support in security and care provisions. This is a descriptive case series conducted over a 6-month period. Physicians determined clinical diagnoses, and clinic personnel assigned security scores (one to five) based on: 1) crowd control; 2) the incidence of looting; and 3) threats of violence by individuals demanding treatment. Mobile medical teams that provided health care to regions in urban and rural Somalia assisted by United States and Italian military forces. At 149 mobile clinics, 25,265 patients were treated. Medical treatment included dispensing medications, intravenous rehydration, and minor surgical procedures. The effectiveness of security measures was scored based on: 1) effective crowd control; 2) the lack of theft or threats of violence; and 3) the unimpaired operation of the clinic. Medical teams treated 25,265 patients. The most common medical problems encountered were skin infections (19.5%), upper and lower respiratory tract infections (16.1%), and gastroenteritis with dehydration (7.1%). Malnutrition was seen in 4.7% of cases, and trauma accounted for only 0.7% of complaints. When military escorts were provided, the mean security score was 43% higher (4.85 +/- 0.46) as compared to the absence of a military escort (3.40 +/- 0.60) (p < 0.001). Mobile medical clinics were found to be effective in this setting despite difficult conditions, limited therapeutic modalities, and few in-patient facilities. Infectious diseases were most common, while malnutrition and trauma were less commonly seen. The cooperation of United States and Italian military forces facilitated relief efforts by maintaining security, particularly in unstable areas.