Crowd Control – How to Avoid Mass Panic

Mass panic! Every event organizer's fear. Hundreds of people die at sporting events, religious events and festivals every year.

We know just how dangerous such major events can be since the Love Parade in Duisburg in 2010 when 21 people died and over 600 were injured. More than 150 people died within minutes in the nightlife district in Seoul last year. Can this be prevented? Scientists and practitioners are looking for solutions. For example, at the Züri-Fäscht, Switzerland's largest public festival. Here, new approaches are being taken with "crowd management" to ensure that the event with two million visitors does not become dangerously crowded. Researchers already know a great deal about how mass panic occurs. The reason is rarely panic - but a lack of planning in advance. The vast majority of people act rationally in crowds. Scientists want to predict the behavior of crowds in real-time. Video cameras recognize dangerous movement patterns. The aim: to gain time to be able to intervene. To do this, they let test subjects into the crowd at Europe's biggest metal festival for the first time.