Discussion Articles
Manage Crowds (don't control them)
Crowd Management is an area of expertise. This article discusses understanding and awareness as well as deployment. Far too often Crowd Control is relied upon to manage crowds and it is suggested this often leads to a variety of issues.
Major crowd related incidents continue to occur every year. This article discusses research relating to awareness and understanding of these events and of the subsequent guidance and reviews
Awareness of crowd theory
Whilst crowded events become ever more common, there remains no singly accepted explanation addressing the complexities of crowd behaviour. This article discusses the awareness and understanding of theory amongst a section of crowd safety professionals
Flow Rate, Densities and the Maths
The dreaded Maths…
Flow rates and densities are often key aspects of a failed crowd management plan. Understanding the required calculations will not only keep people safer but will also improve the customer experience. This article explains the figures and provides examples.
Crowd disasters can be divided and categorised in many different ways; numbers of fatalities, location, time, or event type for example. The key is that the applied categorisation assists someway in the development of crowd safety. This article proposes one potential way and comments on how those responsible for crowd safety should consider their own methods
The mad, impulsive mob
Following an incident the crowd themselves are frequently blamed. Common terminology such as ‘mass panic’, ‘stampede’ and ‘out of control’ identify the behaviour of the crowd as the cause of disaster. This is very unhelpful when trying to learn from past incidents. Here we argue against this attribution of blame.
Guidance, Legislation and standardisation
This article considers guidance and legislation in the event safety industry. It is suggested the knowledge and understanding which underpin these should continue to be questioned and challenged to ensure crowd safety is maintained.
Control Room Tools
The complexities of crowd management can be simplified with the use of tools and models. Rather than relying on feedback once issues have arisen, the feed forward approach provided by mathematical models provides crowd managers with the foresight to predict crowd movements. This article proposes such a model and discusses its use.
Capacity vs Density
Two well used words in crowd management – but they are not the same. Too often used intechangeably, this article explains the differences between them and provides practical examples.
The enduring legacy of Classical Crowd Theory
The classical crowd theory, most famously articulated by Gustav Le Bon in his 1895 book The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, presented crowds as irrational, and inherently dangerous. This article discusses the damaging legacy and and likely failings of techniques based on this school of thought.
Policing football
The police service have long been involved in mass crowd events. This article discusses their role and relationship with football events and considers how well placed they are to manage football crowds.
Catastrophe theory
Cusp Catastrophe Theory describes a sudden change in state. This article discusses how the theory can be used to explain the relationship between crowd movement, crowd density and crowd order.