Monitoring crowds at your event will enable you to detect and react to overcrowding issues at an early stage. This will also help you to assess how effective your crowd safety precautions are.
Considerations include:
- monitoring the overall number of people (to ensure the safe venue capacity is not exceeded)
- monitoring the distribution of people (to help prevent local overcrowding)
- identifying potential crowd problems (eg to prevent the escalation of public disorder)
Areas to monitor are likely to include:
- entrances and exits
- standing areas with a potential for crowd surges or pushing
- popular stalls, attractions, exhibits and refreshments
- potential bottlenecks/pinch-points (eg stairs, escalators etc)
- areas where people queue
- enclosed or confined spaces
Crowd monitoring systems
Monitoring numbers
Counting systems at entry and exit points can help you estimate numbers within your venue or area of the venue, for example:
- hand counters
- turnstiles
- computer-chipped tickets/wristband
- people-counting sensors
- thermal counting
- monitoring mobile phone signals
Where there are few defined boundaries, such as at a street events and where people are continuously arriving and leaving throughout the day, you could consider:
- sampling flow rates into and out of areas – useful indicators include the space between people and a rough count of people over a small, identified area
- monitoring cars and coaches entering the venue and checking how full parking areas are
Monitoring by your staff
Staff patrolling within the crowd can experience conditions at first hand. It enables them to observe people's faces, identify signs of distress and sense the atmosphere/tension, which is useful information for supervisors and other key decision makers. Staff on the ground can also help people or diffuse situations. Their presence alone may even discourage disorderly behaviour.
If monitoring is done by staff as part of other duties, eg ticket checking, make sure they have enough opportunities and time to do this. Otherwise, consider having additional staff to reduce their workload or to monitor and manage crowds during busy periods.
Other ways of monitoring crowds
Observation platforms, fixed/mobile CCTV cameras and drones can provide additional information on crowd movement and distribution in a number of areas and can help you direct and monitor crowd management operations.
Monitoring social media can also provide useful up-to-date information on a crowd's mood and expectations.