Summary

Multiple crowd crush incidents occur around the world every year resulting in thousands of fatalities, but risk can be mitigated through hiring enough security personnel, detailed planning, and crowd monitoring.

Issue

Injury and death are the most tragic results of crowd mismanagement and occur at large religious gatherings, music concerts, sporting events, public celebrations, in retail environments and at many other types of large gatherings.

Benefits

Asafe event is the primary benefit from proper crowd management, but it also prevents harm to businesses, cities, and venues that host events, as incidents can hurt brand reputation, cause loss of revenue and tourism, and spark lawsuits.

Process or Approach

Descriptions of mass panic and stampedes are problematic because they shift blame away from event planners and onto crowds themselves, but nearly all crushing deaths from crowds is a consequence of poor planning and design, poor control and policing, and mismanagement. Research into pedestrian traffic and modeling of actual trampling incidents shows crowd behavior can be predicted and assessed alongside the layout of the venue and design of circulation routes.

1. Event organizers and security must work together to plan pedestrian flows and develop contingencies.

2. By anticipating and analyzing crowd density, speed, and how individuals assess and choose paths to reach their goal, organizers can predict ‘danger spots’ and implement appropriate traffic control measures. When crowds reach a density of five people per square meter, people are in danger of being trampled.

3. When extreme crowd pressures build up at barriers crushing injuries and deaths from asphyxia can occur, but there are typically several minutes in which corrective action can still be taken—such as collapsing crowd barriers.

4. Strike a balance between limiting entrances to control crowd flow into an area and allowing a large crowd build-up outside.

5. In an emergency, people will escape via the exit they know best, even if it’s not the safest, which planners should consider.

6. Physical venue features that can contribute and injury include: (1) Steep slopes; dead ends, and locked gates. (2) The convergence of several routes into one. (3) Uneven or slippery flooring or steps.

7. The ages, social, and cultural make-up of a crowd will affect crowd behavior and suggest appropriate arrangements. Crowd intention should be considered (e.g., if it will be to gain sight of something or someone, then anything climbable is a fall hazard.)

8. The number of police or security must be sufficient to manage the crowd, permit timely response to hazardous conditions that can develop (e.g., reverse or cross flows in a dense crowd), and is important to reduce liability in the event an injury occurs.

Imperative

Crowds possess enormous destructive power as trampling tragedies prove, so major events or gatherings demand well-trained security personnel from quality security firms for effective crowd management and planning that includes rigorous study of event location, circulation routes, anticipated crowd behavior, and crowd familiarity with the venue, as well as a review of physical features that might contribute to hazardous conditions, and a plan for monitoring crowd density and managing behavior effectively.