Crowd Safety Management – What is? Why be that?

Hello my dear colleagues! During these five months working in the Expo 2020 Dubai and living in the Middle East, I just started to read many articles and cases about Crowd Management & Crowd Control. For those who have never had the opportunity to visit the Expo 2020 Dubai, the event is giant, with 4 main entrances, where the visitor can move freely through 3 districts and 2 parks. The environment is diverse and hosts international pavilions, fairs, network, stages, shows, and many, many incredible experiences. All happening simultaneously during 6 months.?More details in www.expo2020dubai.com . You must imagine that to make this event happen it takes a lot of planning and study in crowd management & control.?

But after all, what is Crowd Management? Why be that? In a quick research on google it says that Crowd Management it’s the?organised and substantiated planning?and the direction given to the orderly progress of events where large groups of people gather together. As a part of crowd management, measures can be taken to direct or limit the behaviour of groups of people. Talking in a different way, when we plan the flow of a group of people, how they will be directed, the entrance and exit of this group and their positioning within an area or space that can be closed or open, we are basically doing crowd management. By doing this type of planning correctly, using existing processes and current tools, it means that in addition to generating more comfort and a suitable experience for the visitor, spectator or public, the event producer is MAINLY ensuring the safety of all participants of that event. Including himself and your staff.

But how to do it properly?

I think that before bring some strategies and tools which help us to plan and understand the venue operations, we need to have a quick look back in the past. And the reason is because of all the problems and issues that we had in the past. And the reason for that is because most of these operational tools that we use today came about due to the experiences, and I would say mostly the tragic experiences, that we had in the past. Of course, make mistakes is human and for that a lot of self-criticism was done. The review of processes and venue designs took place over time to bring a safe event for everyone.?

Design

When we think about an event, the first thing that it came on mind is the venue, or the space which will host the event. Most venues closed have the bowl design. And this format has been around since Greeks and Roman times.?This design permits an increase in capacity while not increasing the distance from the performance. Besides that, the format also permits a control of numbers in sections, and the acoustic sounds better for the spectators. In addition to the bowl format, the Romans add to this design the vomitorium, an entry and exit routes within the seating blocks. Adding to that, the corridors and walkways allowed a constant and controlled flow inside the area. All of this old design, which still until today is to permit that the spectator goes through a seating block, then the area opens up.?

To understanding the design of the venue or the space where the event will take place is the first step to plan the Crowd Management exercise. Only after this first step can we start thinking about the circulation and what information that will be given to spectators and what kind of physical tools we can use in order to allow controlled access for visitors to the space.

Circulation & Information

Circulation refers to when your audience is inside at your event and is moving through and around the event space. So, the event manager has to plan always two situations flow:

a)??????Normal circulation (regular ingress & egress);

b)?????Emergency circulation (fast ingress and evacuation);

We always need to do our events to be as smooth-running and safe as possible, both when things are going to plan and very much not going to plan. To do that, we also need to consider some questions:

• What is the capacity at low/high density? Define each area in the site as a density profile. Different areas have different uses and therefore different crowd requirements (such as queuing, front of stage, bars, toilets, etc).?
• Which direction will the crowds approach the site? Specifically, the loads from and to the local transport infrastructure.
• Over what period will the crowds arrive? Do you have sufficient welfare in place?
• What is the maximum flow rate of the arriving crowds? *this determines the flow-fill-fail times. Some areas will require two-way flow calculations.
• How are we communicating with our audience with respect to how we want them to act?
• Is our signage at a high enough level to be effective when sight lines are obscured by the crowd?
• Is the information we’re putting out online and across our social media channels accurate?
• Is there a better way to delineate queues than to use temporary, aluminium barriers?
• What announcements do we need to make during the event?
• Might we consider removing some signage and instead utilising staff members to actively engage with the audience?
• How are we going to let the audience know how we want them to leave the venue?

Done! After answer all the questions above, the venue manager needs to make sure that the dot plan, signage, wayfind, barriers, emergency gates, guest services, information desks, etc, it’s in the right way or position. Doing that we are reducing the risk of incidents considerably. Now that we think about planning how the public will circulate, from the entrance, internal circulation and exit, it is important to explain some modern tools that facilitate the management of a small, medium and large event.

Management

Each venue or event has its own physical or budget characteristics. Not always what is valid for one event will also be valid for the other. However, it is important to emphasize here some points or documents that can help a lot in the planning and operation of the event. But the most important here is to have all the systems or tools in place to anticipate, respond and mitigate crowd behavior.

• Manpower or staffing levels;
• Dot plan (staffing deployment plan);
• Event Control Facilities (MOC or VCC);
• CCTV or Crowd Monitoring Facilities;
• Regulatory frameworks;
• Previous experience;
• Ambulatory or First Aid facilities;
• Stakeholders imperatives;
• Radios set and ready for the staff;
• Radio Fleet Map;
• Contact List;
• Emergency Call Signs (Code List);
• Assembly Points;
• Daily Run Sheet;
• Briefing and Debriefing;

These risk management allows crowd management to plan ahead and anticipate possible contingencies in advance allowing them to be mitigated before they become a reality on the day of the event. It also allows for the deployment of resources in expectation of crowd contingencies arising such as the provision of engineering controls such as crowd control barriers, marshals, megaphones, and or additional stewarding numbers at transport hubs or messages directing patrons to exits using Variable Message Signage Boards.?

Now let’s back to the Expo 2020 Dubai. Can you imagine how is to plan and execute all the information above in all of the area? It took years and a huge and amazing team on the back to do it. Every day we?have to plan and discuss new dot plans, flow directions and infrastructure to support during the on hours. Beyond the 192 International Pavilions inside the Expo, there’s lots of roaming entertainment happening in the same time. The sheer scale of what’s on offer is 15 hours of daily entertainment (including up to 60 live shows), more than 200 participants and host of culinary and cultural highlights.

Today, after 5 months, the Expo reached the number of 15 million of visitors. To reach that numbers its necessary lots of dedications and flexibility. Because every day our zones changes the set up. But we never leave all of this knowledge behind. One of the first rules about management is to never lose the concentration. When you relax to much some major incident can happened. For this reason, every day we do walkthroughs on the zone with the Health and Safety team to ensure that all site is clear, without any hazard risk and clear for the visitors, before the gates opening. Over than that, after the gates are closed to visitors, fundamental and important work begins with repairs and risk mitigation and review of equipment and procedures in each space. Quiet work is very important to ensure safety. Follow the procedures is the best way to make sure that your event will be a success and fun for the visitors. Practice the crowd management and control is basically plan and prevent any major risk for everybody. Including the staffing team. So, let’s keep our head up and learning with our experiences and mistakes. Yallah!