CrowdDNA, a Horizon 2020 research project will lead to a radically new concept in the management of crowds. Crowd Dynamics International Ltd. call for owners and operators of events and entertainment environments to get involved.
The world is experiencing rapid population growth and urbanisation. Now, more than ever, there is a need to understand crowd behaviour and implement efficient crowd management in places such as urban areas, transport hubs, stadia and large events. Technology is becoming the cornerstone of analysing human behaviour. Thus, the scientific community and industry have come together to tackle these issues in a large-scale research project called CrowdDNA.
CrowdDNA research will lead to a radically new concept to assist event owners and operators in the management of crowds in the major event organisation, pedestrian traffic management and crowd movement analysis and decision support. It is a project funded by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme, with the aim to combine biomechanical and behavioural simulation in complex scenarios of interactions between many humans. The 42-month long project brings together a consortium of seven partners from three EU countries and the UK, comprising leading European research and academic institutions, and SMEs from the crowd management industry that are also leading technology providers.
The main idea behind CrowdDNA is to analyse the features of a crowd at all scales. For example, studying crowd motion, which can reveal valuable information about the structure of the state of a crowd. This challenges the existing paradigms in the field of crowd management by providing new crowd simulation technologies; developing new variables to help understand the parameters of a crowd; and to interpret and predict crowd behaviour. In CrowdDNA, there is a clear scientific challenge: the need for a deep understanding of the relations between the smallest scales of crowd interaction and the largest ones up to the entire crowd.
CrowdDNA technology will result in a new generation of crowd simulation models, which can predict the dynamic behaviour of crowds and associated risk factors. It will revolutionize the practices of crowd management to answer the requirements of modern society on safety and comfort in crowded spaces.
Crowd Dynamics International Ltd. is the lead partner on sourcing and securing ‘observatories’, real-life scenarios in the events and entertainment environments where data on crowd movement can be captured. The importance of the observatories is to process data on authentic crowd movement outside of a controlled experiment environment.
Crowd Dynamics call for owners and operators of events and entertainment environments to get involved in the project by allowing us to data capture for the benefit of both you and the project. The results of the data processing for each observatory will be made available to the owners and operators and can be used to enhance crowd flow from insights provided.
To find out more information about the CrowdDNA project, visit www.crowddna.eu or contact Goc O’Callaghan at Crowd Dynamics International Ltd. on goc.ocallaghan@crowddynamics.com
