From Crowd Dynamics to Crowd Safety: A Video-Based Analysis

Advances in Complex Systems, Volume: 11, Issue: 4 (2008) pp. 497-527

Posted: 26 Apr 2010

See all articles by Dirk Helbing

Dirk Helbing

ETH Zürich - Department of Humanities, Social and Political Sciences (GESS)

Date Written: August 2008

Abstract

The study of crowd dynamics is interesting because of the various self-organization phenomena resulting from the interactions of many pedestrians, which may improve or obstruct their flow. Besides formation of lanes of uniform walking direction and oscillations at bottlenecks at moderate densities, it was recently discovered that stop-and-go waves [D. Helbing et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 97 (2006) 168001] and a phenomenon called "crowd turbulence" can occur at high pedestrian densities [D. Helbing et al., Phys. Rev. E 75 (2007) 046109]. Although the behavior of pedestrian crowds under extreme conditions is decisive for the safety of crowds during the access to or egress from mass events as well as for situations of emergency evacuation, there is still a lack of empirical studies of extreme crowding. Therefore, this paper discusses how one may study high-density conditions based on suitable video data. This is illustrated at the example of pilgrim flows entering the previous Jamarat Bridge in Mina, 5 kilometers from the Holy Mosque in Makkah, Saudi-Arabia. Our results reveal previously unexpected pattern formation phenomena and show that the average individual speed does not go to zero even at local densities of 10 persons per square meter. Since the maximum density and flow are different from measurements in other countries, this has implications for the capacity assessment and dimensioning of facilities for mass events. When conditions become congested, the flow drops significantly, which can cause stop-and-go waves and a further increase of the density until critical crowd conditions are reached. Then, "crowd turbulence" sets in, which may trigger crowd disasters. For this reason, it is important to operate pedestrian facilities sufficiently below their maximum capacity and to take measures to improve crowd safety, some of which are discussed in the end.

Keywords: Pedestrian dynamics, crowd turbulence, video analysis, fundamental diagram

Suggested Citation

Helbing, Dirk, From Crowd Dynamics to Crowd Safety: A Video-Based Analysis (August 2008). Advances in Complex Systems, Volume: 11, Issue: 4 (2008) pp. 497-527 , Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1505303

Dirk Helbing (Contact Author)

ETH Zürich - Department of Humanities, Social and Political Sciences (GESS) ( email )

ETH Zurich - Swiss Federal Institute of Technology
Clausiusstrasse 50
Zurich, 8092
Switzerland

HOME PAGE: http://www.coss.ethz.ch

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