Crowd management has been a long-standing life safety challenge for both fire-related and non-fire emergencies in assembly occupancies. The lack of data-informed situational awareness to identify rapid changes in crowd density, movement, and other behaviors presents challenges to crowd managers.

Although tramplings, crowd crushes, and other disasters lead to civilian deaths every year, modern technologies can enhance existing crowd management strategies.

On November 12, 2020, the Fire Protection Research Foundation hosted a webinar that presented a proof-of-concept tool for data-informed crowd management and decision support, highlighting the collection, analysis, visualisation, and reporting of crowd movement to inform near real-time crowd management strategies.

This research effort funded by the U.S. Department of Commerce and a National Institute of Standards and Technology Fire Grant is being led by the Fire Protection Research Foundation in collaboration with the National Fire Protection Association.

The full recording of this webinar is available here. Visit www.nfpa.org/webinars for more upcoming NFPA and FPRF webinars and archives.