Title: Testing and evaluation of crowd management strategies at religious gatherings in India using agent-based modelling and simulation

Authors: Abha Trivedi; Mayank Pandey

Addresses: GIS Cell, Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology Allahabad, Allahabad-211004, UP, India ' Computer Science and Engineering Department, Motilal Nehru National Institute of Technology Allahabad, Allahabad-211004, UP, India

Abstract: Crowd management in religious gatherings is a complex and non-trivial task. Lack of planning and management has resulted in many unfortunate incidents of stampede in the past. Though local authorities deploy crowd management personnel to avert and control this crisis, some unforeseen events still lead to crowd panic resulting in stampede. These personnel follow pre-defined crowd control strategies and manuals. These strategies are deployed directly over real-time situations without prior testing. In this paper, we have proposed a simulation framework using agent-based modelling to provide near to real scenarios of crowd gatherings, their interactions and behaviour at religious places. This crowd model is further utilised to test and evaluate crowd management and control strategies. Steps are also suggested to remove the shortcomings of the strategies. We have taken Alopi Devi temple of Allahabad, India as a demonstrative case study. The simulation results establish the applicability of our methodology.

Keywords: agent-based modelling; ABM; religious gathering; crowd management; spread of rumour; stampede; control strategies.

DOI: 10.1504/IJAIP.2022.124320

International Journal of Advanced Intelligence Paradigms, 2022 Vol.22 No.3/4, pp.379 - 415

Received: 30 Dec 2017
Accepted: 29 Oct 2018
Published online: 22 Jul 2022 *

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