By Rushan Ziatdinov
The tragedy at Itaewon made humanity pay more attention to the issues related to crowd management. Thinking about this sad tragedy, I am overwhelmed with tears of bitterness that everything turned out this way.
I remember the time when I was a postdoc at the College of Engineering of Seoul National University in 2011. That year, the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami hit Japan, and I was impressed by how the Japanese, without widespread panic, managed to cope with its terrible consequences.
It seemed to me, a person who arrived in Asia from nearly another planet, that here in Asian countries, people are more disciplined and responsible.
In fact, crowds are everywhere, especially in highly dense regions and countries. And crowds can result in hazardous conditions.
The crowd is a huge, often unpredictable power. A wild flock of bees can kill a human, a swarm of locusts can destroy a field of crops in a few minutes, and a pack of hyenas can tear apart an elephant.
Is managing a crowd that simple? It isn't from a scientific and engineering viewpoint. Crowd management is related to complex behaviors and individual preferences of people and many other random and uncertain factors which are hard to predict.
Despite this, it's a significant issue that needs to be addressed systematically by the international and government authorities, government and private organizations, and all people, in particular, should think and understand how to behave and what to do if there is a crowd.
In every tragedy, dozens and possibly hundreds of factors are challenging to calculate mathematically. Clearly, probabilistic forecasts tell us more about uncertain outcomes than point forecasts.
And what can we, scientists and engineers, propose for managing crowds? Scientific and engineering approaches can effectively solve various problems of humanity, such as crowd management, position tracking, and many others.
Foremost, we must utilize better knowledge about the behaviors and preferences of people of different ages and generations, cultures, educational backgrounds, etc. Why, for instance, do more people visit branded coffee shops than any other coffee shops where coffee quality might be the same or sometimes even better?
Usually, well-known and popular places have many more visitors. This is another problem related to consumer behavior. Unbiased management of customers and human capital is also essential from the point of view of social justice, as not only large and well-known companies but also smaller ones have the right to exist.
Furthermore, crowded places might be potentially dangerous for various accidents and crimes. Many disasters can be prevented if we change human behavior and the environment.
Engineers and social designers can think about developing environments where people feel safe, included, and happy. Changing people's behavior for the better is possible through humanistic approaches in education, where cooperation, but not competition, dominates.
In the case of mass events in confined areas, people can use the check-in system by using an app or a website, identifying their interest in visiting an event. Don't we do something like this when going to an airport, booking a hotel, or visiting a doctor?
Such an approach will help the police and other emergency services know approximately how many people are at the event. People counter cameras, such as Fujitsu's intelligent CCTV for crowd analysis and improved crowd control, can also be used where legally permitted.
Briefly speaking, people need to cooperate continuously with responsible agencies or organizations. Privacy issues are undoubtedly important here, but what can be more valuable than a human's life?
Also, crowd management technologies have advanced substantially over the past few years. Here, mobile operators are key partners for smart cities seeking to deploy sustainable crowd management solutions.
The Global System for Mobile Communications (GSMA) reports that "Crowd management solutions from mobile operators can be used for a wide variety of purposes. They can be used to monitor and analyze both crowds and transport ― to identify how they move, how environments can be planned around them and the source of any issues or unusual behavior. Mobile operators are well placed to offer these services using the information collected by their existing networks and by IoT sensors connected to mobile networks."
Yamin et al. (2018), in a work entitled "Managing crowds with wireless and mobile technologies," mentions that, in recent years, stampedes and other crowd-related tragedies have claimed thousands of lives.
The majority of these fatalities appear to have been brought on by poor crowd management and control, as mentioned in the article. The authors' proposed system has two subsystems: one for managing stampedes and other disasters and the other for managing healthcare. The system includes an algorithm for early stampede detection, accompanied by simulations and implementation evidence.
According to the Science Advances article by Murakami et al. (2021), human crowds serve as paradigmatic examples of collective behavior that emerges through self-organization. The findings suggest that pedestrian avoidance maneuvers are typically cooperative and that efficient pattern formation is aided by mutual anticipation amongst pedestrians.
Cooperation is an effective solution to crowd management in mass activities such as soccer or baseball games, festivals, demonstrations, and traffic. Smart cities should extensively utilize advances in science and technology to solve existing and predict future problems, promote cooperation, and be inclusive for everyone.
An ideal way is to develop a digital twin for every person, company, organization, event, surrounding environment, etc., for observation and forecast of various interactions, human health and behavior, the company's economic situation, social conflicts, violence, etc.
This system would exist if and only if we, humans, understand the necessity of a systemic analysis approach in solving problems.
Moreover, this system is so complex and extensive that its solution will probably fall into future generations' hands and quantum computers. They may find more reasonable and non-standard ways to manage things within the digital economy and smart cities to make everyone happy.
Rushan Ziatdinov (www.ziatdinov-lab.com) is a professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering at Keimyung University, Daegu. He can be reached at ziatdinov.rushan@gmail.com.
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I remember the time when I was a postdoc at the College of Engineering of Seoul National University in 2011. That year, the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami hit Japan, and I was impressed by how the Japanese, without widespread panic, managed to cope with its terrible consequences.
It seemed to me, a person who arrived in Asia from nearly another planet, that here in Asian countries, people are more disciplined and responsible.
In fact, crowds are everywhere, especially in highly dense regions and countries. And crowds can result in hazardous conditions.
The crowd is a huge, often unpredictable power. A wild flock of bees can kill a human, a swarm of locusts can destroy a field of crops in a few minutes, and a pack of hyenas can tear apart an elephant.
Is managing a crowd that simple? It isn't from a scientific and engineering viewpoint. Crowd management is related to complex behaviors and individual preferences of people and many other random and uncertain factors which are hard to predict.
Despite this, it's a significant issue that needs to be addressed systematically by the international and government authorities, government and private organizations, and all people, in particular, should think and understand how to behave and what to do if there is a crowd.
In every tragedy, dozens and possibly hundreds of factors are challenging to calculate mathematically. Clearly, probabilistic forecasts tell us more about uncertain outcomes than point forecasts.
And what can we, scientists and engineers, propose for managing crowds? Scientific and engineering approaches can effectively solve various problems of humanity, such as crowd management, position tracking, and many others.
Foremost, we must utilize better knowledge about the behaviors and preferences of people of different ages and generations, cultures, educational backgrounds, etc. Why, for instance, do more people visit branded coffee shops than any other coffee shops where coffee quality might be the same or sometimes even better?
Usually, well-known and popular places have many more visitors. This is another problem related to consumer behavior. Unbiased management of customers and human capital is also essential from the point of view of social justice, as not only large and well-known companies but also smaller ones have the right to exist.
Furthermore, crowded places might be potentially dangerous for various accidents and crimes. Many disasters can be prevented if we change human behavior and the environment.
Engineers and social designers can think about developing environments where people feel safe, included, and happy. Changing people's behavior for the better is possible through humanistic approaches in education, where cooperation, but not competition, dominates.
In the case of mass events in confined areas, people can use the check-in system by using an app or a website, identifying their interest in visiting an event. Don't we do something like this when going to an airport, booking a hotel, or visiting a doctor?
Such an approach will help the police and other emergency services know approximately how many people are at the event. People counter cameras, such as Fujitsu's intelligent CCTV for crowd analysis and improved crowd control, can also be used where legally permitted.
Briefly speaking, people need to cooperate continuously with responsible agencies or organizations. Privacy issues are undoubtedly important here, but what can be more valuable than a human's life?
Also, crowd management technologies have advanced substantially over the past few years. Here, mobile operators are key partners for smart cities seeking to deploy sustainable crowd management solutions.
The Global System for Mobile Communications (GSMA) reports that "Crowd management solutions from mobile operators can be used for a wide variety of purposes. They can be used to monitor and analyze both crowds and transport ― to identify how they move, how environments can be planned around them and the source of any issues or unusual behavior. Mobile operators are well placed to offer these services using the information collected by their existing networks and by IoT sensors connected to mobile networks."
Yamin et al. (2018), in a work entitled "Managing crowds with wireless and mobile technologies," mentions that, in recent years, stampedes and other crowd-related tragedies have claimed thousands of lives.
The majority of these fatalities appear to have been brought on by poor crowd management and control, as mentioned in the article. The authors' proposed system has two subsystems: one for managing stampedes and other disasters and the other for managing healthcare. The system includes an algorithm for early stampede detection, accompanied by simulations and implementation evidence.
According to the Science Advances article by Murakami et al. (2021), human crowds serve as paradigmatic examples of collective behavior that emerges through self-organization. The findings suggest that pedestrian avoidance maneuvers are typically cooperative and that efficient pattern formation is aided by mutual anticipation amongst pedestrians.
Cooperation is an effective solution to crowd management in mass activities such as soccer or baseball games, festivals, demonstrations, and traffic. Smart cities should extensively utilize advances in science and technology to solve existing and predict future problems, promote cooperation, and be inclusive for everyone.
An ideal way is to develop a digital twin for every person, company, organization, event, surrounding environment, etc., for observation and forecast of various interactions, human health and behavior, the company's economic situation, social conflicts, violence, etc.
This system would exist if and only if we, humans, understand the necessity of a systemic analysis approach in solving problems.
Moreover, this system is so complex and extensive that its solution will probably fall into future generations' hands and quantum computers. They may find more reasonable and non-standard ways to manage things within the digital economy and smart cities to make everyone happy.
Rushan Ziatdinov (www.ziatdinov-lab.com) is a professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering at Keimyung University, Daegu. He can be reached at ziatdinov.rushan@gmail.com.
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