Citation

Harihara Subramanian G, Verma A. Safety Sci. 2022; 155: e105877.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2022, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.ssci.2022.105877

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Since time immemorial, India has hosted numerous religious gatherings and periodic events. Many of these events have been marred by crowd crushes and accidents. Human behavior being a complex phenomenon, can lead to complex behaviors. This makes the safety of people in crowded places a major concern for the government and management authorities. Capturing and studying these behaviors through empirical studies is essential to predicting crowd risk at a given location. To predict the level of risk, a comprehensive crowd risk prediction model in the form of Crowd Risk Index (CRI) was developed in this study. The CRI was developed from three indices (1) Crowd Dynamic Index (includes speed, flow, density, social group, and serpentine group behavior) (2) Crowd Anxiety Index (includes patience and aggression scores) (3) Temperature Humidity Index (includes temperature and humidity). With an overarching understanding of the factors leading to critical crowd conditions, the CRI developed in this work can help the crowd managers reasonably predict the level of risk and implement appropriate crowd management measures.

Language: en

Keywords

Crowd risk prediction; Crowd safety; Kumbh Mela; Mass religious gathering